


Rugged Skies

by annamaymasters5319



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (probably), Alpha Castiel, Alpha Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Angels, Angel Charlie, Angel Dean Winchester, Angel Kevin, Angel Sam Winchester, Angel Wings, BAMF Charlie, BAMF Dean, BAMF everyone, Demon Ruby, F/F, F/M, Genocide, Genocide themes, I literally got the name of this fic from a floor buffer, If I can even write smut, Knotting, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, NOW WITH FAN ART!, Omega Charlie, Omega Dean, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pretty much all the monsters, Slight underage, Torture, Wing Grooming, Wing Oil, Wingfic, Wings, cuz its abo, they're a bunch of angels n'stuff whacha want from me?, we'll find out together?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:40:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4594941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annamaymasters5319/pseuds/annamaymasters5319
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At that moment, the last of the bunker blew, the rubble from the control room raining down around him. The blast forced him away from the rock, throwing him into a spiral that took him further from the destruction. Dean yelled in pain as he flared his wings to slow his decent, the sudden snap pulling at his muscles. Gliding across the tree tops and fighting the slight thermals that threatened to pull him up higher, he searched for the flash of light that had drawn him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing here. But, meh-how bad can it really be? This is somewhat of a rough draft, as I'm going to add Tags and warnings and whathaveyou as I write this. In a perfect world, you'd get an update twice a week at the same time with a hopeful little ribbon wrapped around it. In reality, I have no internet access at home and severe ADHD, so I'm on this crazy train with you.... I can't remember if I installed seatbelts... Good Luck!  
> And thank you thank you thank you for checking it out!  
> And I especially want to thank my wonderful, awesome, patient Beta, wingofcastiel, whose tumblr I can't offically link you to yet, because tumblr is too risque for a work computer, it would seem...

“Dean! Forget it let’s GO!”

The Renegade Angel was difficult to hear over the screaming alarms and whipping wind, but from the desperate look on his face, his older brother got the gist. Dean spared Sam a glance as he continued to work furiously over the many buttons and dials that made up the Bunker’s ancient command center.

The Bunker was just a nickname; it was actually carved into the peak of a mountain, making it more of an eyrie than a hole in the ground. It was still one of the most fortified, secret bases the Renegade’s had, holding everything from the early histories of their flock to the most recent of recorded births. Some of the first leaders were buried with their mates in the deepest caves, supposedly, and even fifty years after rediscovering it, more caches of knowledge were still being found. This made what Dean was doing necessary, and painful.

The first alarm had sounded only thirty minutes ago, waking everyone but Kevin (who was always up at ungodly hours) from a dead sleep, and giving them almost no time to escape. They were all prepared, for the last several years following the practice of keeping boots, survival packs and all weather gear near work stations or at bedsides. Dean had shot from his nest and raced to the control room at the very top of the eyrie, forgetting his pack and boots, clad only in Charlie’s favorite Star Wars pajama pants (shut up).Luckily it was just Sam, Kevin, and Charlie that Dean had to worry about now. The last group of refugees to stay at the Bunker had been over six months ago; a ragged flock of betas moving from one outpost to the next.

Sam had seen Kevin and Charlie out almost twenty minutes ago, but he himself had refused to leave without Dean, Although too small for years growing up, Sam had proven to be an Alpha. An unusually tall, effortlessly Dominate one at that. Since presenting, Sam rarely had to ask for anything twice, and although he did his best not to use his Alpha Voice and scent whenever possible, he had never been challenged, not once. He had never tried to use his higher designation as an advantage over his Omega brother before either, but the desperation of the moment gave Sam the push he needed to change that. Dropping the small bag of gear he had been struggling to clip to his waist, he stalked toward Dean with his shoulders back and his head high, feathers flared and wings arching up and over the Submissive Angel busy shutting down and starting  struup various programs.

Sam's height and wingspan (twenty six feet, not that Sam had measured them or anything), coupled with large muscles and a naturally sharp gaze, would have made him intimidating regardless of what his wings looked like, but Sam's wings belied his mostly sweet nature. A dark red that appeared black in certain light began at the scapulars, fading to a bright arterial red at the primaries. In most ‘supernatural cultures’ (a term humans had coined), red was considered a color of bad omen, and while a more modern line of thinking had been adopted over time, Sam had still been treated like a freak growing up. Until he presented, of course. Now he was treated more or less like some kind of villain, as if he had somehow chosen his status and wing color, and would use them to some kind of nefarious end.

 His dominance display was an act that Sam had never pulled before, not like that, and it would’ve given pause to even the fiercest of Alphas, of any species. Dean’s submissive instincts should’ve kicked in. Any Omega or Beta Angel should drop their gaze and bare the back of their neck at an Alpha’s demand.

Even with no personal experience preforming the gesture, he had seen other Alphas use their stronger scent and larger wing span to assert dominance. Only ever on Betas, of course. Sam could probably count on one hand the number of Omegas of any species he had ever SEEN, let alone met, but how wrong could the human media have really gotten the nuances of the “third gender”? There had to be some truth in all those Omega tropes. Not that humans used a whole lot of supernatural species in movies to begin with. And obviously they weren’t all like the sassy male Omegas in romantic comedies, with the short-shorts and the cheesy innuendos. And of course, Dean was definitely not like the hysterical female Omegas in action movies, always screaming in the Alpha hero’s face while the city got destroyed.

 All that aside, an Alpha was an Alpha, and an Omega was an Omega, and Mother Nature always won out in the end. Sam welcomed this train of thought, adding a hint of righteousness to his scent that would at least make Dean feel a little better later. Maybe. Either way, Sam always got what he asked for eventually, and he's never had to take or apply force before. Which was why he was so surprised when the sharp curve of Dean’s wing snapped up to whack the Alpha in the face after another cursory glance from his work.

“Don’t be bringin’ that shit here, Sammy, not now!”

Dean gave another quick look at the massive opening that, until just thirty minutes ago, hadn’t been there. It was designed as a last minute escape hatch; an entire wall that pulled apart the rock to reveal nothing but sky and a 10,000 foot drop into thick, uncharted forests. The door, when activated, was meant to trigger a series of self-destruct sequences that would blow the bunker apart from the bottom up. Some of these rigs were nothing but decades old dynamite and wire, but Ash, (just like the rest of them, probably) had some serious mental health issues that had never been addressed, so Dean trusted whatever psychotic mess of explosives the Beta had set in place for just such an occasion. The occasion being the much-feared-but-never-expected event of an attack.

The only problem now: no one had ever actually tried to run the self-destruct program. At first, it looked like the escape hatch itself wasn’t going to open, only for them to find that every goddamn bomb had to be set more or less manually, one by one, from the bottom up. And Ash really liked bombs. So even with Seraphs on their asses, undoubtedly swarming up the stairs and entering vaults at that very moment, Dean was determined to make sure that nothing, and no one, ever left this mountain after him.

“I’m not leaving here without you, Dean!” Sam said, clutching the bloody nose that mached the primaries now flared in agitation at his waist.

Dean grabbed his brother on either side of his face, pulling his forehead down to his and looking him in the eyes, disregarding the blood smeared across the Alpha’s face. Eyes locked on his brother’s, Sam hardly noticed their steady walk backward, toward the open wall.

“Our parents, Sammy, our entire family, DIED for this. Our ENTIRE RACE is dying. I’m not gonna let our histories fall into the hands of those sparkly-winged DICKS.” He pulled away, shoving the pack to his brother’s chest. “I will meet you at the landing spot, I swear to you. Now go help Charlie. You’re the one with the med kit, remember?”

“Dean, I-”

But whatever Sam was or wasn’t got lost as Dean unceremoniously shoved him over the cliff face and into the night. He turned back to the task at hand and several tense moments ticked by.

                                     %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

The drum of heavy, well trained boots broke through the howl of wind outside. Through the door they came, white-winged Seraphs dressed in the solid black uniforms of the elite task force, sent once again to rape and pillage his people. Dean backed away from the control panel and toward the open sky behind him. Making it look like he was intimidated by the soldiers in front of him, and perhaps trapped by the strong headwinds that had prevented his enemies from penetrating the mountain by air. The winds were predictable if you knew them, but deadly to strangers.

Dean assumed a crouched position, wings flattened against his back in a sign of deference. His own wings matched his younger brother's in pattern, the fade from dark to light was a family trait inherited from their father's side (John's wings had been a masculine camouflage green). However, if there was ever a better example of opposites, Dean had yet to see one. Where Sam's coloring was all blood and ill omen, Dean's wings were a deep indigo. Starting on the midnight side of the shade and ending at the primaries in a bright blue a Seraph had once described as a "blasphemous mockery of Heaven’s will" (whatever the Hell that meant).

The aggressive upward flare of Dean's primaries could be excused as fear. An easy conclusion for the other angels to come to, when all these Betas (and they WERE Betas, Seraphs had very strict protocols when it came to gender and hierarchy) had only ever known victory. Or whatever you’d call the systematic destruction of an entire sub-species.

 As soon as Dean’s scent was caught, the responding scent among the solders changed from reigned in confidence to the familiar, foul, cloying odor Charlie had once aptly described as “rapey”.

 Dean growled in frustration 'Only a few more seconds', he thought, his hand hovering over a large red button on the console, 'one last friggin button and we’ll be home free'. And although what happened after that thought, happened in a brief moment, it felt like time had been suspended.

From behind a broad, leering soldier to his left came a loud shout of “Halt!” in Enochian. The sound of it was like a tidal wave crashing down around him; a deafening rush that pulled away leaving anyone foolish enough to remain a pliant, weakened mess. The dark rumble screamed Alpha, soaking down into Dean’s very bones. It had had an effect on the Angels before him, to, as they dropped their sneers and smirks into masks of neutrality, wings folded back and shoulders straightened.

Around the now tightened unit he came, dark hair whipped wild by the wind. His brow was raised slightly in the mild interest of a jaded commander, a slight frown of irritation slipping past the pale pink cupid’s bow of his lips. Even from a distance, his eyes were obviously blue, some stormy shade that Dean couldn’t put a name to. Elegant fingers, loosely grasped around the short sword of a high ranking officer, tightened at the sight of the trapped Omega.

 All of these details were taken in at sweep of Dean's sea-green eyes, as they came to a stop on the Seraph’s wings. And this Alpha was obviously a Seraph; the obnoxious glitter of his wings the entire race was so proud of would have given it away. What had really stopped Dean's train of thought, though, was the color. All Seraphs had wings of white. Off white, eggshell; the Archangle Michael had wings so white they were difficult to look at in the right light, (something Dean would only admit to Charlie of knowing). But this Seraph, this Alpha, had wings of black.

Dean’s heart began to race in an inappropriate rush of adrenalin. Black, he thought helplessly, blue eyes. Alpha. As the commander made his way to the front of the formation, another eddy of wind curled through the bunker’s command center. It carded through Dean’s short brown hair before swirling past the Seraphs in front of him. As the innocent gust carried a nauseating mix of sweaty, aggressive Beta back to him, another scent hit him with a force so powerful he leaned forward unconsciously.

 It was salt water, crushed hay, the tart burst of a fresh cherry made hot by the sun. It was lust and family and home all pulled into an ever changing rush of emotions that Dean hadn’t fully felt since early childhood.

As the air found his lungs, and the pheromones hit his bloodstream with an almost physical force, he felt an unfamiliar heat tugging from below his shoulder blades, where the fluffy down that covered his back formed a soft cushion between his stiff wing joints and powerful muscles spread to the soft underside of the joint. From his oil glands, (which he never touched himself, preferring the scent blocking synthetic oils for grooming) there was a sudden pressure, relived seconds later by the release of a tiny, unwelcome bead of liquid.

If it hadn’t been for Charlie’s patient explanations years ago, of what it meant to be an Omega and what could (he had steadfastly REFUSED to accept WOULD) happen, under certain circumstances, he would have probably lost his life, or worse, his freedom, that night. His body was betraying him. Not with a familiar gush of heat or slick, but with wing oil perfuming the air; a quiet, yet firm, invitation of sex.

 It was a tease and a threat, meant to entice his potential mate, while evoking a loud challenge to any Omegas; blasting a cry of “that is mine, this is theirs, challenge us if you don’t agree!” It was the evolutionary remnants of a time when the entire species was on the brink, as Kevin would have explained, a holdover of by gone  days when only the fittest offspring would survive, and birthrates were critically low for those species that weren’t much for fertility to begin with.

 He flicked his gaze from the breathtaking black to an equally dizzying blue. As their eyes met, Dean had absolutely no doubt that the scent had been captured, illiciting an accptence as instincual and unintended as the invitation . The Alpha’s shell-pink lips had parted, and his chin was now tilted up slightly to alllow more of his mate’s scent to reach him, and giving Dean the space he’d need to scent his Alpha’s neck.

 As the reality of MATE hit him, Dean woke from his daze. The overwhelming fear of an Alpha dominating him, throwing him in a cage, breeding him until perpetual pregnancy and multiple births caused his body to give out, was more than enough to quell the mating imperative. The mere concept of someone being allowed, encouraged, to force him into submission, snapped him back to fight or flight, and he tore from the Alpha’s unwavering stare.

 The hardly noticeable red button suddenly began to flash, and Dean reached his hand out, hovering over it as yet another Seraph came forward, parting the crowd. Dean knew him instantly. Dark skin, blue-white wings and impressive height, all undeniable proof of his genetically superior Seraphic heritage, and sending him to become the highest ranking leader of the Seraphim flock, matched in power only by his sister Raphael. Large golden eyes fanned by full black lashes led to Michael’s regale, slightly upturned nose, and a mouth so full a splash of pink could be seen on his lower lip. Michael's face had once been the epitome of angelic beauty and virility. Now, a jagged purple scar cut unevenly from his right temple, leaving the eye socket an empty hole and maring the once perfect nose. That scar was Dean’s magnum opus.

“Winchester.” The Seraph said with a triumphant sneer, the stretch of the scar contorting his face in horrifying menace. But his smile quickly twisted into a grimace of rage and confusion as the lights flickered above them and Dean’s face lit up like a child opening an unexpected gift.

 The red button had stopped blinking.

 Dean slapped his hand down upon it and ran to the escape hatch, turning for one last sight of the blue eyed Alpha. He swallowed at the look of pain and longing on the Alpha's face, knowing his own was a reflection of the devastation. Keeping his eyes on the commander, not wanting to miss even a second of what could have been, Dean let himself fall backwards.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A longer one this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this came up sooner than expected! Hoozah! Anyway, if your squeamish about bones and such, perhaps stop reading now... I'm upgrading this to Mature, because I consider Explicit as more of a porn-related rating? Not that I intend to cheat anyone out of their porn, it's just I've never written it before and i'm worried about my porn turning into that soccer-player gif on tumblr...  
> A quick little note for the A/B/O verse I've got going here: Omega Males are very rare and not treated well. Omegas of both sexes have "channels" although a female's is where it generally is in all females. Maybe we'll get into more detail with that one later... Alpha females don't have knots, because that has never made any frackin sense to me. Designation is more scent oriented than anything else. Alpha males have knots, Betas don't, Betas are capable of having kids, it's just not as easy and they tend to have far fewer than an Alpha/Omega pair would. Idk about mpreg. I don't have issue with it, I just don't know how that would fit into the story...  
> NOW WITH FAN ART BY THE AWESOME WINGEDCHESTER_67!!!

Dean plummeted straight down, wings pulled tight, following the flat face of the mountainside to keep his enemies from following him. Angels were creatures of the sky, and instinct would have the Seraphs looking up and out. He grimaced as a head wind threatened to toss him against the rock. He could feel the vibration of the bombs within exploding, and was grateful the many chambers had been built mostly on the other side or he’d probably be toast by now.

The dark pines below him continued to get larger, and he gave a silent plea to whatever gods he didn’t believe in that Sam had made it to the rendezvous point. As if said gods could hear him, a flash came from below. Two quick blinks of Kevin’s flashlight from a familiar break in the trees. If he could’ve breathed properly around the rush of wind, he would have sighed in relief.

At that moment, the last of the bunker blew, the rubble from the control room raining down around him. The blast forced him away from the rock, throwing him into a spiral that took him further from the destruction. Dean yelled in pain as he flared his wings to slow his decent, the sudden snap pulling at his muscles. Gliding across the tree tops and fighting the slight thermals that threatened to pull him up higher, he searched for the flash of light that had drawn him. It didn’t go off again, but he had a good guess as to where it came from.

Aiming for that break in the trees, he crossed his fingers that this was the right spot. Otherwise he’d be alone. In the dark. Without a weapon.  Or shoes. Surrounded by an enemy that’d been trained to believe their literal _purpose in life_ was to torture and murder as many of his kind as possible. In a forest so dense he couldn’t hope to fly out of. In nothing but Charlie’s Ewok pajama pants. Fuck, he was a brilliant strategist.

The Omega folded his wings to the first joint, feeling smug as the combs on the ends of his feathers (unique to Omegas) allowed him absolute silence. He may have misjudged the angle of the landing, however, and he tried to stay quiet as he crashed, ass over ears, into the undergrowth. From his position face down in the dirt, he heard the sarcastic lilt of Kevin’s voice as he said “Eight out of ten, you could have added some pin-wheeling with your arms for a more balanced form.” Charlie’s giggling “SSSHHH!” came from the same direction, before he heard his brother hiss, “Quiet, both of you! We don’t know who’s out here.”

Another earth shattering boom came from the smoking mountain behind them, and suddenly Charlie’s voice was much closer, muttering “I have a feeling that mountain is gunna be going off randomly for years.” “Knowing Ash, you’re probably right.” Dean murmured into the ground, still lying on his belly. “Sammy, please tell me you remembered to pack the whiskey.”

“It’s been two minutes, Dean!” Kevin and Charlie gave a forceful “SSSHHH!” at Sam’s indignant shout. “I packed WATER.” said Sam. Dean pushed himself into a sitting position and took an appreciative swig from the canteen his brother had dug out for him, along with a pair of boots and a light thermal jacket that snapped at the sides. Dean used Kevin’s dim flashlight to riffle through the pack his brother had grabbed for him, giving an appreciative grunt when he pulled out the pieces of his wrist-mounted crossbow (a favorite weapon among angels) “You even packed extra mre’s! Nice work Sammy!”

“Great, now that your stomach has been taken care of, we can just mosey along; all we need to do now is make the five hundred mile flight through enemy territory and you can get laid!” Kevin was starting to get that stressed out whine to his voice that meant a spiraling rant wasn’t far behind, before Charlie interrupted with a cheeky “Technically, everywhere is enemy territory, so it’s really just a five hundred mile walk to the ocean.”

Kevin had been born in the mountains of the north pacific, where the largest population of “free” Renegades was left.  The humans of the territories there had made a tentative treaty with the Seraphs to remain neutral. It was the last safe haven for more than just Renegades now, as most humans either expressed indifference to the plight of any supernatural creature, or celebrated the idea of them wiping each other out. From what little news had been making it’s way to the Bunker these days, Seraphs had begun campaigning for more than just Angelic segregation in the last decade.

Although Kevin had yet to MAKE the journey back, the magnetic pull of an angel’s birth place was as accurate as a compass. They were all grateful for the day the Beta had stumbled past one of the Bunker’s sensors; sky blue and tan feathers ruffled and broken, half starved and twitching with fear, but not permanently damaged.

 

“Oh hell no,” said Dean, “there is no way we’re gonna live through this if we spend the whole trip on the ground. It would take weeks to get there. Not to mention Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, HUMANS. Any one of them finds us and we’re done for. The bounty on Sam and me alone is going to be astronomical after tonight. But nice try Kev, you almost got away with having to keep up with the big boys.”

There was a tense silence that followed. “What?” Dean looked around. “What am I missing?”

“Charlie.” Sam said evenly. Charlie knelt down in front of Dean with an apologetic half smile on her lips, gesturing to her right side. Her lemon yellow wing was wrapped at the scapular, the bandaging thin enough to still see the grey dappling that ran down to her outer primaries. And the white bone, sticking up through the feathers. The dressing was clean and wet, (Kevin’s work most likely) but not bleeding through.  “As long as I keep it still, it really doesn’t hurt at all! It’s my muscles that are going to start kicking my ass soon. The slice on my side doesn’t even need stitches, but there was this assbass with a freaking CLUB, and I sorta tried to do this stupid ducking around him thing that didn’t pan out.”

Large green eyes wide with guilt, the other Omega leaned further into Dean’s personal space and continued talking a mile a minute. “God Dean, I am SO sorry! I know I should have listen to you, I know I should’ve just grabbed my crap and ran, but dude, those files- I know we only had like, half of it on hardwire but we worked so hard to get just that on there and I just- I couldn’t let it just-“

“Charlie.” Dean’s voice was soft as he pulled himself up to his knees as well. He took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead before pulling her to his chest and resting his chin on the part of her bright red hair. His own green eyes reflected the glow of the waning moon peeking through a gap in the rushing clouds as they met his little brother’s. Sam swallowed visibly as he realized his brother was holding back tears.

An angel that couldn’t fly couldn’t fight. She'll have to defend herself from attack with a massive, useless appendage hanging off her back “Dean” It was Sam. “It’s not a damn death sentence. It’s a clean break, we can wrap it up better or something when we actually see; she’s going to be fine.”

“No, Sam, Deans- kinda right.” Charlie pulled away from the other Omega to look up at Sam. “It’s not a fun little march to Rivendell we’re going on. People have DIED trying to make it there, in SUMMER, on WINGS, without INJURIES, or, you know, bad guys after them. It’s SEPTEMBER Sam. The only way to get there now is to fly over the desert and hope nobody notices a mutant alpha that looks like the harbinger of the apocalypse, a real live male Omega, and the only terrorist dumb enough to get his cute little bluebird wings caught on camera.”

 "Hey!" Said Kevin "I'm a MEDIC. Geneva Convention dude."

 Charlie rolled her eyes at the interruption “Or you fly over the mountains and try to beat the worst of the winter storms-”

“We’re not leaving you” Said Dean. Charlie gave him a sad smile. “I know.”

 “Okay” said Kevin “but we COULD go through the forests ALONGSIDE the range. At least… until we get to the plains” He winced a little at the thought; the plains were just that, wide open farm lands populated by humans who were famously anti-supernatural politically and religiously, and hardly any safe houses.

“The FORESTS.” Said Dean “You mean that huge grey blob on the map that’s never been charted? The place escaped CRIMINALS refer to as PURGATORY? You want to WALK through PURGATORY?”

“We aren’t solving any problems with our thumbs up our channels. Let’s get a little farther from the exploding death mountain and go from there, m’kay?”

“Oh my god Charlie, please don’t start-” Kevin whined.

“What? I’m an Omega, I have a channel, it produces copious amounts of slick several times a year, it’s just anatomy, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Charlie.” said Kevin and Sam together. Charlie chuckled as Dean helped pull her to her feet. He buckled his own pack around his waist before snatching up Charlie’s and throwing it over his shoulder, between his wings. He cocked his eyebrow at her and she shook her head with a slight smile, falling behind Kevin as Dean brought up the rear.

 

 

 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

 

 

It felt like they were walking through a sauna. The trees overhead blocked all but a few shafts of sunlight, and the angels felt claustrophobic surrounded by the thick foliage.

 “Are you…. are you SURE this is the right way? Like…..positive? Cuz….. it feels like all these plants are just getting closer.”

Sam didn’t miss a beat as he sliced through broad leaves and heavy vines with his machete. “Yes Kevin, this is the right way.”

In his defense, Dean thought the kid did look a little over heated. His ears were turning bright pink and the skin around his neck was starting to get blotchy. Even with his wings pulled up slightly to expose the skin underneath and allow the cooler air in, his scent had been emitting faint tones of Beta distress. Now there was a hint of illness mixed in.

Dean knew his Alpha brother wouldn’t be able to smell the sharp bitterness of potential heatstroke, even if he had been down wind. Alpha angels didn’t have the best sense of smell, but their eyesight was powerful. The famous human adage being something along the lines of: ‘when hunting an Angel, Alpha can see you, Omega can smell you, and Beta can out smart you.’ Why humans had ever been dumb enough to hunt ANGELS in the first place was beyond Dean, but the idea wasn’t exactly wrong, either. Not every Beta was a genius, of course, but they tended to have a higher intelligence than most humans. Kevin actually WAS a genius, even among angels, but smarts didn’t always translate in to real-world applications. Hence the dehydration.  Kid only packed one canteen. An empty canteen. The Beta was starting to stumble slightly. They had been walking through the forest for hours, but it was a downhill walk and if Charlie could keep going with a broken wing, Kevin would just have to suck it up. Still, Dean wasn’t a complete asshole.

“Charlie, pass this up to Kevin.” He grunted, offering her a canteen and turning to walk backward several paces for the thousandth time. “Drink it all Kev,” he called quietly over his shoulder “but keep walking. Almost there.”

The sound of Kevin loudly quenching his thirst floated through the trees, and Dean winced to himself as he turned back around. He wasn’t surprised to find Charlie looking over her shoulder at him again, with the look on her face that said ‘really?’ Dean just shrugged a little and trudged on. It wasn’t something they could do much about at the moment; but Kevin, and especially Sam, were both incapable of quiet.

As Omegas, Dean and Charlie both had a natural affinity for stepping carefully, avoiding any sound their feet might make. They instinctively knew where to hide and when, how to keep their breathing soft and their scent low, even when gripped by panic or pain. When an Omega didn’t want to be seen, they were invisible. Like prey, Dean used to think, before he met Charlie and she reminded him how the owl makes no sound when he hunts. Even with their bulky wings behind them, Dean and Charlie moved through the trees like wraiths.

From his position in the back of the line, Dean could smell all three members of their little flock. He could concentrate and smell the various plants and insects being crushed underfoot. The flecks of Charlie’s blood drying on her skin; a rush of wind through the canopy that didn’t reach the forest floor gave a hint of snow.

 “Mountain passes are snowed in.” Charlie commented quietly. Dean grunted in agreement. He trusted Charlie’s nose more than his. Damn thing was almost psychic.

 An Omega’s sense of smell in all species was the sharpest of any gender, (Weres the absolute best, supposedly) and sometimes they were used just for that skill. Laboratories and government facilities kept Omegas in special, negative airflow rooms for their entire lives, using scentless soaps and feeding them through special IV fluids so their olfactory systems were pure. Dean remembered watching some special on national geographic a few years ago. Sam had been fascinated by the thin, pale Omega Weres and Demons, gracefully bending shorn heads to petri dishes from behind thick panes of glass. Dean had pretended to fall asleep before it had ended, he didn’t believe for a second they were there voluntarily. Explaining why he thought that to Sam wouldn’t have been worth the headache. His little brother asked enough questions about the four years Dean had been absent from his life.

Dean’s big ass Alpha and loud mouthed (adopted) Beta little brothers stomped through the woods like they were walking down a sidewalk. Under their feet, branches cracked and leaves crunched, and they hadn’t seen so much as a squirrel. Sam and Kevin breathed in great, messy huffs, grunting and sighing and talking back and forth in what they probably thought were low voices. And the SMELL of these two. It wasn’t like they smelled BAD to Dean, not really. They smelled like brothers are supposed to; kind of annoying, sweaty, a little over protective. Family.

To anyone tracking them, though (and obviously no one was yet, or they’d have been dead hours ago), every drop of sweat that hit the ground or smeared across a tree was like neon sign flashing “this way, they went this way! And they stopped here and that one ate this and this one peed over there!”  _Lucky Seraphs are a bunch of Omega-enslaving bigots_ ; Dean thought bitterly, _an Omega with a broken nose_ _could probably find us right now._

He quickly slammed down that line of thinking, before he opened any doors meant to stay cemented shut. He was already having a hard time putting bricks in front of the latest memory, feeling a horrible twist somewhere in his gut every time he pictured fathomless blue eyes or the cherry orchard he and Sam had lived near right after their parents died…

 _Shutshutshutshut_! He thought to himself. Charlie whipped her head back at his sudden change in scent with a look of serious concern, not fooled by the blank look on his face.

“Dean.”

“No.”

“DUDE.”

“Don’t.”

“Are either of you going to start using full sentences back there?” Kevin interjected.

“NO.” Both omegas responded.

Dean thought he heard Kevin mutter something like “creepy”, under his breath, right before Sam gave a happy cry of “This is it!”

“Dude,” an exhausted Kevin huffed “you sounded way too surprised for that to be reassuring.”

Sam gave a weak and guilty looking shrug as they stepped out of the dense forest and in to a large meadow. After so long without sky above them, the small flock visibly relaxed, stretching out their wings and tipping their faces up. The tree line made an almost perfect circle, at least twelve acres across, with no brush or saplings to transition from wood to field. The ground rose gently into a shallow, wide mound, dotted with Indian paintbrush, milkweed and Queen Anne’s lace. The midday sun was breaking easily over the trees, giving the changing leaves a golden glow. There was a slight gurgling sound coming from a stream nearby.

 As the breeze picked up, Charlie gave an audible moan, stretching out her wings without thinking. “Ah!” she shouted, bending her knees and grabbing at her injury. “Sweet, MERCIFUL Yoda, that was stupid.”

“Yeah?” asked Dean with a little smirk, the euphoria of fresh air and open sky chasing away the dark memories of the night before. “C’mere” he said with feigned exacerbation. He brushed his large fingers gently over the bandaging before digging through his pack. “Hey, Sammy!” he called, not looking up from his rummaging.  “You got any saline?”

“Yeah!”

Dean looked up as the shadow of his brother’s large wings blocked out the sun. Sam handed him a small clear bag of the solution. “That it?” Dean asked. “No, Dean, I have an entire bag full of nothing but bags of sterile saline.”

  “Alright Miss O’Hara, calm down.” Dean waited a beat “How’s your nose?”

“Shuddup.”

“Oooo, tell me what you did to his nose!” Charlie demanded, settling in like a teen at a slumber party.

“Dude, he tried to DOMINATE me. Like, wing display, tried to change his scent, whole nine.”

“Oh my god, SAM. Seriously?”

“I was desperate! He refused to listen to reason!” Sam defended.

Dean set to work, gently unwrapping the cloth around her wing. She hissed as he squirted the saline around the protruding bone before relaxing into the cooling sensation. “Well, I gotta say Charlie, this looks way better than I thought it would.”

“See! Told ya! No bigs. Ah!” “Sorry!” Dean’s ring had caught on one of the damaged feathers at the break sight.  He was suddenly in front of Charlie, staring at her wing like it was a puzzle he almost had solved. “Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Charlie keeping her wing perfectly still but leaning her upper body away. Dean acted like she hadn’t spoken. “I don’t like that.” She tried again. “That look usually mean someth-“

“HEY KEV! C’MERE!” Dean yelled across the meadow.

“I’m right here.” said an irritated Kevin. He had been sitting in the tall grass a few feet away.

“You know, for a beta, you’re pretty sneaky when you wanna be.”

“That’s sexist.” Charlie and Kevin shot back simultaneously.

“And you call ME creepy,” Dean muttered, before continuing. “What do you think your mom would have done, if someone had come into her clinic with a break like this?”

Kevin’s mom could be a touchy subject for the Beta. His mother runs (or ran, he doesn’t know for sure anymore) an underground network of clinics specifically for Renegades, and freedom fighters in general.  His Alpha mother’s oppressive desire for her son to move to her home country, stay out of trouble, and hide from the genocide, was what prompted him to rebel and take his medical training with a mixed group of young people to the capital. Of the twenty or so that had made the failed attempt to bring down the Chrysler building, (a major source of financial power for the Seraphs) Kevin was the only one to escape.

 After weeks of running, moving from safe house to safe house and finding shelter where he could, Kevin was finally directed to The Bunker. Or rather, pointed in the general direction of a vast mountain range by a Beta Vampire who was so old her fangs had fallen out. “Angels g’on up there” she had said with a thick southern drawl. “That’s where all the colored ones used t’stay at, anyway!” Kevin had wanted to tell her that no one used the word ‘colored’ anymore to describe Renegades, but when he had turned back from the intimidating peaks, she had literally fallen asleep in her rocking chair, the moths landing in the porch light that reflected off her white hair. There were so many reasons not to follow that racist old Vamp’s directions. To this day Kevin has no idea why he had gone that way; only that yeah, up high sounded good. That had been almost a year ago.

Kevin pulled his lips in as he scrutinized the break, keeping his arms folded across his chest. “I mean,” he started and stopped. “Well it’s not a bad break… an x-ray would have to be taken fist.  I’m not that familiar with the nervous system. If we mess it up, you could have neuropathy, or chronic pain, or no feeling at all, or it could damage the entire wing, or your spine-“

“Alright Kevin,” Dean interrupted “we get it, bad things, but you’ve seen this stuff before, right?”

“Oh yeah, totally, broken wings, arms, legs. It’s tails that are the REAL bitch. Do you know how many bones a Demon HAS in their tail?”

“Okay then” said Dean as he clapped his hands together “let’s set this son’avabitch!”

“Are you JOKING? Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Yeah but Kevin,” Sam had stayed silent through this exchange until now “we’re not exactly near a hospital. We can’t keep the bones moist for more than a day or two, and by then infection won’t be a risk, it’ll be a fact.”

Charlie piped up, her voice low but steady. “Not really anyone’s call but mine, boys. Do it.”

Sam and Dean gave each other a weighted look, before coming to some unspoken conclusion and moving into position. Dean set his hands on her shoulders, bracing Charlie and forcing her to look directly at him, with Sam kneeling behind her.

Dean took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Trying to give off as many soothing pheromones as possible, allowing his protective instincts to take over. He purposefully pulled his wings from his back and allowed his wing oil to flow. He mentally crossed his fingers he could even control his scent, since he hadn’t actually attempted this particular Omega skill before. Everything he’d ever heard about it made it sound extremely difficult, if not mythical.

 He opened his eyes “Charlie, this is going to hurt like a bitch, okay?”

“You know, you’re kinda sorta starting to smell like cherries, did ya know that? Like, not like, the doping me up scent you got going on” She stage whispered an “AWESOME b t dubs” before continuing. “I mean, you smell like YOU still, but like, you smell sorta” she paused to stare vacantly off to the side for a beat before murmuring “Cherries”, more to herself it seemed.  She then gave him a dopey, distant grin as her eyelids began to droop.

“Hey wanna tone it down a notch Dean; I personally would like to remain conscious for this.” Kevin said from somewhere behind him. Dean felt his ears heat. “Sorry” he muttered “not used to doing this.”

“THAT’S because the only person you’ll let touch you oil glands is another sexually depraved Omega!” Charlie chimed in a too loud voice. “Hey! Dean! We gotta BOTTLE this shit! People would spend soooo much money. Do you remember that time your oil duct got plugged (cuz you like, never drain ‘em) and I had to take you into the showers and-“

“Sammy? Are we doing this or what?” Dean looked up at his little brother with a glare, while Sam fought to keep his composure in the face of Charlie’s stoned over-sharing.

“Okay Charlie” Sam began, a hand on either side of the bone. “On three-“

CRACK!

Sam slid the bone back together with a powerful flex of his forearms. The Omega gave one loud shout of pain before biting through her lip to keep silent. Kevin moved behind her crouched form, wrapping a clean bandage around the wound and muttering to himself about a splint. Dean kept a steady rhythm of “you did good kid” and “everything’s fine.”

Charlie collected herself quickly, and after some shaky breaths and a few wipes of her face, she was sitting up straight and cracking more one liner’s, relived that the wing actually felt better now. Kevin had wandered off to find a suitable splint for the damaged wing, after telling her not to “move it, at all, no matter what, because you could re-break the bone, or pull more muscles, or it could heal wrong”.

Sam was further up the hill, looking down and moving his foot back and forth occasionally.

Charlie watched the odd little ritual for a few minutes before opening her mouth to ask about it. Dean had been watching her watch his brother, though, with a guarded expression on his face. He answered her as she took a breath. “He’s trying to find even ground to sleep on.”

“Why-“

Just then, Kevin came back with a handful of thin, smooth branches. “Have any of you noticed how uneven the ground is here? It’s like every time put my foot down, it sinks down or slips on something. And there’s sticks or roots or something under here to, they keep snapping.”

At that last observation, Charlie’s lips went white and her eyes locked on Dean’s. Whose face looked….apologetic? She started digging around franticly with one hand, before pulling dirty fingers from the black soil. In them rested a strangely curved object with holes on one side.

“Holy shit.” Said Kevin in a monotone voice. “Holy shit.” A little more hysterical now.

 “Kev-“ Dean began, but either Kevin didn’t hear him, or he didn’t care. “HOLY FUCKING SHIT! That’s- fuck! That’s a jaw bone. That’s a- a CHILD'S JAW BONE.”  

The young Beta began to stumble over every dip and peak, frantically searching the ground around him as if expecting a hand to shoot up and grab him. If his wings hadn’t been flared out, he probably would’ve lost his balance in his panic. Sam had heard the shouting and jogged over, hands held up in a placating manor. “Kevin, buddy, listen-“

“Where the HELL are we, Sam? Dean? How many bodies are we even standing on? How do you even KNOW about this place!?”

“BECAUSE, Kev” said Dean “We’ve been before.” He grew quiet, looking at his brother now as he said “Our mother is buried here.”

“No-”

“Yeah Kevin.” Sam sighed, running his hand through his hair before meeting his eyes. “Sooo…this is Stull.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any questions? I know I have plenty, but as I'm the one writing this, I'll just have to answer them on my own...  
> My tumblr is http://casdeansintrouble.tumblr.com/


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's that? No I haven't been lying on the floor in a fetal position, weeping over a fan fic I've been trying to write... Why do you ask? Oh, well, carpet impritinting on your cheek is like, a fashion statement this fall...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome!!! Seriously to anyone who has left a comment or kudos, or hit subscribe, or hated it and chose not to comment something negitive, thank you! I really wanted to avoid drawn out monologs, and as a result, I'm afraid I have done the opposite for this one...

Kevin gave a sharp, hysterical laugh. "STULL, Sam? Don’t you think that’s just a little callous? Naming some… some kind of… supernatural elephant grave yard or whatever, after the monument? My cousin is buried there! Stull is the only thing we have to remember the war by, you can’t just… throw the name around!"

"Yeah, Kev?" Said Dean "You been there? You go to the capital, walk around, leave flowers at your hero-cousin’s headstone? I didn’t think so." He had moved into the Beta’s space now, his wings flared out in irritation. The sudden change in Dean’s scent was giving Kevin vertigo.

"I’m gonna puke." Kevin groaned. Dean jumped back with a pump of his wings, lifting his feet off the ground in his rush to get away. As Kevin staggered off to dry heave into some milkweed, Charlie turned to the larger Angels. Her face was pale, but her voice was steady.

"You two need to go a little easier on him- I’m not telling you to shelter him, Dean" She said as he opened his mouth to interject. "But these kinds of bombs can’t just get dropped on a person without warning. He didn’t grow up on your side of the mountains; all he REALLY knows is what the Seraphs allow everyone to know. He’s not just going to ‘wake up and smell the genocide’ overnight. And Sam," She whirled on the Alpha, who stepped back a pace, raising his brows and lowering his head. "You’ve been the one with him almost every day. How could you dig through our histories with him like that and just let him continue to believe the kind of tripe they feed kids in those segregated schools?’

The sight looked like a comic in a human newspaper; a slender, pouty lipped little Omega with her finger pointing a solid foot up into the face of the broad shouldered, slightly frightened looking Alpha. The reality of the situation, however, kept Dean from teasing, aiming instead for diplomacy.

"Okay Charlie, down girl. Sam didn’t want to burst the kid’s bubble is all. We get it, Kevin deserves to know the truth and we can’t be mean to him, sharing is caring. Sammy is sorry. C’mon look at the poor, dumb, over-protective Alpha."

"Eat me milk-jug."

"Can it banana hammock!"

"Okay!" said Charlie, putting up her hands while Sam mouthed ‘banana hammock?’ at his brother. Dean shrugged.

"Fine, but one more thing: if either one of you try to "protect" me by keeping something from me again, I will rip out your balls and turn them into earrings." She ignored Dean’s quiet cheep of horror "I don’t ever want to find out I’m sleeping on THOUSANDS of corpses, or getting stalked by a LEVIATHIN, or WHATEVER, the hard way again!"

"Charlie that was one time-" She threw her palm up and made an irrefutable stopping noise, before pointing to the kneeling Beta and hissing "FIX. THIS."

 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

 

As the day progressed, and the sun began to sink a little earlier than it did the day before, the breeze turned from pleasant to slightly chilly. The Angels had briefly debated the merits of a fire, but with m.r.e.s to eat and Seraphs actively searching for them, the flock opted to settle in for the night using their wings to keep each other warm. Sam and Dean stretched theirs out and around the smaller two, Sam’s to the outside, Dean’s underneath, while Kevin and Charlie (to the best of her ability with her lop-sided ones) filled in the gaps. The inside of their little circle warmed up fast, and Dean pulled out the packages of food and passed them around. Charlie sighed in contentment as she dug into some kind of steaming beef dish.

"You know you’re hungry when…" Said Dean, as Sam helped Kevin add water. Kevin’s interest faded as he inspected the contents. "I don’t think that’s spaghetti, dude."

"It’s not." Sam replied. "Just try not to think of it as spaghetti, anyway. Otherwise you won’t be able to eat it."

"Wait, Kev" Dean interrupted. "Do you want to eat that before or after? You know, before we tell you… stuff."

Kevin looked up from his fork, finding all eyes on him. He shrugged. "I think I’d better eat now, while I can, if it’s all as bad as you’re making it sound."

They fell into contented, tired silence as they ate. The setting sun was passing through the edges of Sam’s wings, showing off the rich hue that usually appeared so dark, and giving his side of the circle a glowing crown of blood.

Dean watched the rarely seen shade and drifted off into a memory of chasing after little red wings and chubby legs through seemingly endless rows of yellowing trees, the sweet smell of fermentation flooding his nose as he struggled to keep the milky scent of his baby brother in his crosshairs. An uncontrollable giggle trailed after the toddler, elated as always to have an open trail in front of him.

The sun had slipped past Sam’s wings now, and his brother seemed larger than life in comparison to the baby that had hardly fit in his arms. Dean shook his head a little, clinging to the cool-cotton scent that had been a surprise when Dean found his brother again. Finding his baby brother had presented as an Alpha was a pleasant surprise, though. Dean had knocked on Bobby’s door terrified of what Sam could have gone through in his absence; seeing him as an intelligent, gentle Alpha was one of the few good memories Dean had.

Charlie nudged Dean from his reverie. "Cha thinkin bout?" she asked quietly. "Your mom." Dean said with a smirk. Charlie groaned. Sam raised his eyebrows at him but said nothing, returning to his constant scanning of the trees and skies, his inner Alpha unable to relax with his flock in potential danger.

"Alright Kevin, time for the crash course." Dean began as he brushed his hands together. Everyone shifted around, getting comfortable. Charlie, having heard this and much more from Dean, settled down into a more suitable position for sleeping, her head in his lap. Dean’s wing instinctively followed her down, to envelop her better. "I’ll take first watch; you boys enjoy story-time." The yellow-winged Omega murmured, her bright citrusy scent fading a little as she relaxed. Dean let her get settled and cleared his throat before starting again.

"Look man, I can ask you what you think you know, and try to explain to you why it’s wrong, but honestly? I’m fuckin’ tired. We all are. So this is Stull. The real Stull. It’s called that because it used to be a village, like, hundreds of years ago. Our Uncle Bobby taught us about all this stuff. He was human, not really our uncle, but he kept the lore better than any Angel could, given the circumstances. Anyway, this town or village or whatever, got taken over by settlers as soon as they found it. And the reason for THAT is because of the mountain that we just blew to smithereens." Dean swallowed the lump that threatened to rise at the thought.

"See, before the white man came along, bringin the Seraphs with, or vise verse, I doubt anyone remembers it right, this whole mountain range was like a gigantic, ancient city of Renegades. Of course, there weren’t ever as many Angels as humans, so it wasn’t like, ten million or whatever, but there might have been one million, at one point. Anyway, so the Indians built their towns and villages all around the range, and the Renegades that lived on this continent did the same thing, and when the Seraphs from Europe-"

"Who probably originated as a subspecies in Australia several million years ago-"Sam interrupted.

Dean glared his way and continued. "Anyway white humans and regular Seraphs showed up and "discovered" Seraphs weren’t unique, and that’s when it all started. Renegades were rich. Not in money, but in resources and culture. Stull was like an epicenter of trade. But we weren’t fighters. Not good ones, anyway. We’d never had to be. But after a bloody, nasty war-"

"That no one actually knows who started-"

"-we lost. We were kicked out and shuffled around, just like the Indians who lived bellow them. And the Demons, the Vampires, Weres got it real bad too, back then. That’s when everything started to disappear. Fairies, Dragons, Djinn, you name it. ‘Course I doubt anyone misses Kelpies, but it was that line of thinking that started this. If it’s not a white human, it’s dangerous and evil and has to be put in its place or destroyed. Some Seraphs, and most of those Humans, actually believed Angels were messengers of god or something, and all this killing was justified. They had to make the land pure."

"That’s just so messed up." Said Kevin.

Dean gave a much put upon sigh, running his hands over his head before resting his elbows on his knees and eyeing his brothers. "Seriously guys, just let me do this."

Kevin sat up straighter and pulled his lips together, and Dean continued.

"Anyway, after a while, even humans got tired of their little kids watching Vampires getting their teeth ripped and Demons getting their horns cut off in the middle off the town square, so eventually all the killing stopped. Things calmed down; everyone started to live in some kind of peace. And most species ended up getting along pretty well."

He waved his hand about dismissively. "Skip forward a couple hundred years, throw in a drought, a rampant new disease and an economic crash all at once, and suddenly, there’s this huge revival in the old line of thinking. Seraphs good, all other Supernaturals bad, and they start rounding ‘em all up, forcing them apart, and telling them where to live and stay there. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as it sounds; it was more like strongly suggested. Most thought it was a good idea. Who wanted to live around filthy, diseased humans anyway? Vampires drifted south, Werewolves in the north, Demons to the west, and so on. But Renegades, well, we were just like Seraphs, right? I mean, take away the wing coloring and the culture and we’re pretty much the exactly the same.

Now, I really don’t think it was ALWAYS hate and evil between us, I think a lot of it was just a matter of pride. Neither side wanting much to do with the other. I mean, Renegades as a rule don’t like unnatural structures or crowded cities, and Seraphs seem to prefer living above large groups. It was just nature, mostly.

Then, out of the blue, this Seraph, Uriel, comes on the scene and he has this whole campaign centered on the idea that other Supernatural species, specifically, Renegades, were the cause of all Seraphic problems. Can’t farm THAT land: Renegades are livin on it, Can’t send your kid to THAT school- that Renegade teacher is gonna fill his head with a bunch of hoodoo. And WE didn’t want to deal with that shit, so, we fought back. Nonviolently at first, but obviously Angels aren’t the most even tempered to begin with. Well, from there it was only a matter of time before all-out war. And as you can see, we GROSSLY underestimated our enemy." He rolled his eyes "Again. This was in my grandpa’s time, and we were crushed. There’s hardly any history left, our defeat was that complete. In less than a decade, we when from an established part of society to almost non-existent."

Dean paused to take a pull from his canteen, and Kevin used the opportunity. "So, how come they keep kicking the crap out of us? I mean, they won, right? So what’s the point?"

"Well" Sam began, glancing at his brother to make sure he wouldn’t get his head bitten off before continuing "They keep their lore safer then they keep their kids, so some of this is idle speculation, but they basically live for war. I mean, some of their soldiers are just kids. In fact, I’ve heard that before a Seraph presents, male and female fledglings are basically educated in military camps. Every Seraph knows how to use a blade before they’re like, five or six. Their whole culture is wrapped up in war. One of the more accepted theories is that they came to the Americas as mercenaries. The thing is, not even Humans know that much about them anymore."

Kevin’s brows knit together as he contemplated this "Wait, how do you know all off this Sam? I mean, I know they don’t teach this in our schools, and you guys grew up out here, so I know you didn’t take a time out from learning guerrilla warfare to study American history."

Sam’s eyes flicked to his brother before answering with a vague "Home school."

Dean continued before Kevin could ask more questions. "Stull? Man, that was, it was bad. I think a group of Renegades probably WERE caught making plans to fuck something up, I mean, it sucks having to live off the land and in the shadows just because someone else’s grandparent’s thought your people weren’t good enough, you know? It wasn’t easy out here even before Stull.

But the media basically got told that the Renegades still living on this side of the mountains were planning acts of mass terrorism, and they wanted to overthrow the government and shit. The Seraphs… they made it sound like they ‘just did what had to be done, and it wasn’t it a shame? But to make up for it, we’re going to put up a monument and set off fireworks once a year and shit, cuz isn’t it too bad all those crazy Renegades fought to the death like that?’ But THEY named it Stull to mock us. And they dumped every single Renegade they could hunt down this side of the mountains that night in the spot where the village once stood. It wasn’t a battle, it was a systematic slaughter. Every camp they could find, whether they were associated with a rebellion or not, was eliminated. And once the Seraphs started, they just never stopped. Now even the humans are terrified of them. Michael and Raphael? They’ve got this whole continent eating from their hands. That’s what’s so fucked up about this. They aren’t doing this anymore because they feel they HAVE to; they’re doing this because they WANT to." Dean sighed heavily and took another drink from his canteen.

Kevin opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, glanced at Sam and opened his mouth again. "What Kevin?" said Dean, not unkindly.

"You said" he paused before rushing through his words. "How do you KNOW your mom is buried here?"

Dean just stared at the Beta, face blank, before Sam shifted uncomfortably and answered for him. "He was here when they buried her. We both were. I was just a baby, though."

"She wasn’t BURIED, she was dumped. Just like your cousin."

"Dean-"

"No fucking way dude" Dean’s feathers were flared in an odd way and his scent became an unreadable mess as he rounded on Kevin "You wanna know how I know? I was four years old, barley holding on to Sammy, and even though my mom told me to hide, I fucking followed them. I don’t know how I didn’t get caught, except Sam stayed quiet and my wings blended into the night sky. And let me tell you, not everybody buried here that night was a fighter, and not everyone was dead when they went in."

That did it for Kevin, and he pulled away from the circle to vomit again, letting the chill air in. Charlie stirred and sat up, wrinkling her nose at the smell. "Shoulda made him eat after."

"Yeah, well, hindsight." Dean replied. "Get some sleep, Sammy. I haven’t taken a suppressant in over a day, between me and Charlie, we can smell that shrew on the other side of the field."

Kevin eventually wandered back, wiping at is eyes. "I just wanna sleep now." he said, curling up on his powder blue wings. Sam laid down on one of his larger wings a few feet away, but settled the other over Kevin, shielding the little flock’s Beta as he sniffled quietly. Charlie stayed sitting up, set her good wing over Sam’s back, and Dean wrapped around everyone. Neither Omega planned to sleep now.

It was quiet for some time after that. Kevin’s scent had finally settled from sad/scared/disgusted to contented unconsciousness, the cinnamon spark of his base scent rolling off him gently. Sam hadn’t moved, but Dean knew he was still awake. It still startled him when his voice cut through the night.

"Hey Dean?" He didn’t wait for a reply. "What were mom’s wings like?"

Charlie perked up in interest, curious to hear the answer herself. She knew Sam had stopped asking about their mother years ago. Dean was quiet for so long Sam started to drift off, assuming he wasn’t going to get an answer.

"Pink." Dean’s voice cracked.

"Pink."

"Yeah. Pink like…. You remember that sea shell in the kitchen? The one we’d always get yelled at for playing with? We’d try to hear the ocean in it? Pink like that. Every feather was like that. Palest shade at the tips, and it sorta faded to that darker seashell color at the ends. Real pale."

Sam considered this, wishing more than anything he could remember them. For him though, the first wings he remembers reaching for were his brother’s, even now the velvet dark of twilight felt more like home than the bright wash of day.

"Pale? Kind of like a Seraph’s?"

The rest of the night continued in silence.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Raphael dreads in this fic, because wtf? why would a badass, murdering alpha ANGEL waste her time with a friggin STRAIGHTNER? Also, this has not been beta read...

Castiel followed his commander down the corridor with his mind shattered by the events of the early morning hours. He and his team had been searching for The Bunker for years, since the first rumors of its rediscovery surfaced. It was nothing but ghosts and shadows, and Castiel was ready to give up and declare it nonexistent, when the chance detention of a small flock of Renegade Beta lead to its confirmed location. For Castiel, it had been a moment of great personal triumph.

To an outsider's perspective, Castiel's life could be seen as doomed to misery from the start. His mother Ingriel had been an Omega of quality breeding and an unusual independent streak. Despite stories of her beauty and promiscuity (that became grander and more exaggerated over time), the only offspring she produced was Castiel, a fledgling with inverted wings and no father. If it hadn’t been for the vast wealth his grandfather possessed, Castiel knew the odds of him leaving the nursery in the body bag with his mother would have been quite high. As luck would have it (for Castiel, at least) Steriel had no proper heirs at the time, and the hope that the bastard child of his wayward daughter would be both Alpha, and not simple-minded, outweighed the desire to smother him with a pillow. Although Castiel’s wet nurse delighted in telling him stories of how close it came.

When Castiel turned four, like all fledglings of good lineage, he was sent to the training center to be educated. Standard curriculum included mathematics, warfare, history and science. Steriel considered keeping the boy at one of his homes and teaching him privately, but it was decided that if he ended up the only heir, it wouldn’t due to pull the freak out of the attic at the last minute. Better to let people get used to him first. Castiel loved every day he was at the center, and hated having to leave for his grandfather’s estate during the handful of holidays. The Counsil didn’t approve of too much time at home, of course, but it also wanted it’s people to know their children were still alive and well, so every few months the center would close down classes and empty the dormitories. Castiel stopped begging to stay behind by his second year; it really wasn’t appropriate for a boy of his standing to behave in such a way, even if he did have such a painfully obvious abnormality.

The other fledgling’s initial unfriendly behavior toward Castiel was to be expected. After all, the only Angels that had colored wings were Renegades, and they were practically animals. It was only with an announcement of Castiel’s malformation around the time of his birth, and a generous donation to the armory, that Castiel was even able to go to school. If he had just arrived his first day with nothing but black wings and smile, it would not have gone well.

Not that Castiel ever smiled. He was an extremely serious child. With his distinct and purposeful ways, and long bouts of silence, many wondered if perhaps he WAS touched in the head after all. But his test scores proved otherwise. In fact, Castiel was by far the most intelligent student off his class. It would have been the kind of thing that had his grandfather dismissing him as a Beta and tossing the boy out of the will completely, except Castiel was a legend in his first week in the arenas.

The Alpha athletics professor, Virgel, was disgusted by the four year old with bizarre wings and a mysterious paternity. Heritage was everything, but so was common decency, and like many others Virgel saw Castiel’s continued existence as an insult to God. Until of course, he saw the boy in action for the first time.

Virgel considered himself fair, but the world was not; and he was not called to raise artists and bakers. He was training the next generation of soldiers, and he didn’t have the time or desire to hold any child’s hand while they took up space denting his weapons and failing to stay alive. So when Castiel’s class arrived for their first lesson, and Virgel called Castiel forward, put a mace in his hand and a promising older student in front of him, it was with the ‘survival of the fittest’ attitude that allowed the Alpha to do his job so well. The new recruits needed a good shock to the psyche anyway; it helped to keep them in line for a year or two.

Castiel made the boy’s death quick; though clean, it was not. He was only four at the time, after all.

When he was seven, two generals, a brother and sister, executed a coup that (despite devastating his family’s fortunes and leading his grandfather to take his own life) Castiel watched with rapt attention. There was no love lost at the destruction of his possible inheritance. Even if he did turn out to be an Alpha (which Castiel himself very much doubted) his grandfather was a Councilmember himself, he would have figured a way around letting Castiel get it.

Every day he would wake early to catch up on the latest news coming from the capital, imagining the plans within plans the council would be making, and trying to predict Michael and Raphael’s next moves. It was at this point in his life Castiel decided becoming a tactician was going to be his goal. He wanted nothing more than to sit with a group of his peers and discus probability and possibility; to determine the most successful courses of action in any situation. Raphael and Michael NEEDED Seraphs like him when they finally succeeded. And Castiel had no doubt of their success.

The two generals obliterated the status quo; money was moved from the old families that had lorded over the rest of the population with their wealth, to government run programs. The human governments, that before had leaned more toward bland tolerance of the dealings of Seraphs, were now in a firm alliance with Michael and Raphael; they had even written Seraphic policies into their constitution. They dealt with the Renegade issue, and when Castiel was ten, The Stull Memorial was erected to honor those who died in the fighting. The Renegade population doubled in the capital, and some of the money that had been reclaimed from those wealthy families (like Castiel’s) was even used to give them their own place to live. Now they wouldn’t run wild anymore, spreading diseases and committing petty crimes.

By the time he was fourteen, it became apparent to Castiel that perhaps this great change hadn’t been for the best. His education became less about learning, and more about memorizing. The text books were updated, and while it was nice to have new things, the new ones didn’t have half as much information as before. It was a lot of talking up the way the government ran now, and a lot less discussing government in general. That was the year all holiday visits stopped. When he was fifteen, the pretense of an unbiased education was tossed off the roof, and the military aspect became the main study of focus for all students.

At sixteen, Castiel hit his first yearly rut, and he was silently devastated. He had always hoped to be a Beta, and make his own choices in life. Instead, he woke early one morning with his face in his pillow, sliding his hips along his too-dry mattress and feeling like his dick was actually going to snap off. He choked back a moan, so as not to wake the other boys he shared a room with (who suddenly smelled WRONG), and came in spurts that his whole body twitched with. A low ache at the base of his still mercilessly hard cock began to turn into a throb, and then a burn, and he squeezed around it in an attempt to alleviate the pressure. It was then that Castiel understood what was happening to him, and he gasped in a hitching sob as his knot began to swell before his eyes.

He was congratulated profusely, schoolmates he'd never spoken to knocked wings with him, and Beta teachers averted their eyes and lowered their wings as they clapped him on the shoulder. All while he sported an erection so immense he would have considered it physically impossible the night before. It was the strangest experience of his life. Castiel was moved from the dormitories he had always slept in before; to a more private room on the top floor (that he thought for sure had once belonged to the physics professor.) He shared the space with two other students, both older then him, also Alphas. After that, Castiel rarely had contact with someone outside his designation, and then, only in training exercises. He was still an exceptional student, and Castiel was always at the top of his class.

When he reached eighteen, he was enlisted under Michael's legion, and Castiel thought perhaps being an Alpha wasn't so bad.

At the age of twenty nine, Castiel found his True Mate. An Omega, a MALE Omega; and a Renegade. One flash of a scent, and Castiel's Alpha awoke and spread it's wings. A sense of power rose in his chest, so intense it made his head swim. Lavender and cream was chased by his grandfather's tobacco pouch and pine needles, swirling into something not remotely feminine but still Omega. This wild-eyed thing of beauty was the piece of him that he didn't understand was missing until that moment. The whole universe was suddenly more vast then he could have imagined, and equally as small as two green and gold Irises. Soft, full red lips were wetted by a pink tongue meant for Castiel; every freckle that dusted his body was more beautiful than a star. Each constellation had waited a lifetime for Castiel to trace them, with hands crafted to wrap around this perfect being.

He never heard what Michael had said to his mate, but Castiel’s heart swooped with triumph at the grin it produced on his face (logic had long left Castiel, if it had ever been there to begin with.) Watching the Indigo wings blend into the night as he fell backward, hadn’t been as heartbreaking as the longing on his face. Castiel launched forward unthinking, Michael hardly noticed beside him.

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Reporting to Raphael wasn’t standard procedure, in fact, Castiel had never reported to Raphael directly; not even in writing. Then again, Castiel had never had an entire troop eliminated in one mission before either. The loss of life was far too much, and even if they hadn’t been men Castiel himself had trained, he was not going to defend himself from her legendary wrath.

He and Michael had flown above the fiery mountain, dodging rubble as their companions screamed and died around them. They briefly searched for survivors in the growing light, but the Bunker continued to explode, and there just wasn’t any reason to stay near it. They flew without speaking, and landed on the top tier balcony of Raphael’s privet quarters. Capital Towers was built for Angels, and while stairs and elevators were available, most preferred to enter by air. The automatic doors barely shut behind them when her Voice bellowed through the massive entryway.

"WHERE. IS. MY. OMEGA!?"

Still dressed in a long white sleeping gown, the only color on her person was the blood red wrap around her heavy dreads. She strode toward her brother, putting off a scent that Castiel could hardly inhale. The Alpha female looked up into Michael’s face and he averted his eyes.

"I don’t know. I only saw mine." He said quietly. Castiel internally gave Michael credit for keeping his voice even, although he was confused by the words. Did Michael lie to him about the mission objective? It wouldn’t be the first time.

The air in the room became intolerable with Raphael’s fury, and now Castiel trained his eyes to the ground. Even his inner Alpha seemed to drop it’s wings at the scent.

She turned her unblinking gaze unto Castiel now, her face centimeters from his. In another moment pulled from time, he lifted his eyes to meet hers, and something in Castiel SNAPPED. Suddenly, he was scenting and seeing Raphael for the first time. She stood a half a foot bellow him, and he realized he was looking down on her in more ways than one.

It wasn’t always about breeding and wing display, Castiel knew that better than most, but Raphael was mighty. She was THE Alpha, if there was such a thing. She called herself a general, and made it appear that she shared her duties with her brother, but in reality, she was an empress, and all of North America knelt at her will.

All but Castiel. The Alpha in him was ROARING now. It didn’t have time for petty dominance displays, it had a True Mate to find and court, and it wanted to drink this weaker Alpha’s blood from her throat, before taking to the skies. Fortunately for Castiel, he was an expert at keeping things to himself; and if his eyes held Raphael’s for a beat too long, she didn’t comment.

"Tell me, Castiel," she said in a soft voice "HOW did you manage to lose an entire TEAM in a reconnaissance mission?"

He felt his feathers twitch in irritation, and Raphael glanced at them before pointedly turning back to face him, her eyebrows raised in feigned interest. Before he could answer, Michael responded angrily.

"You knew the risk we were taking, and still you sent us!"

"I didn’t send YOU anywhere; you went of your own volition, hoping to regain some semblance of dignity. I can assure you, brother, what little you had left after this has been lost. I want her BACK, Michael. Bring her to me!"

"I have my own to find, sister, I do not have time for yours-"

She laughed without humor. "YOU have never had one to CALL yours. YOU let him escape and he TOOK mine, if you bring that blue feathered bastard back here, I will kill him myself."

Now Castiel was livid. He realized belatedly that he was entering a rut, though he had just had one six months prior. It was no matter, though. The idea of that Omega being hunted, threatened, TOUCHED by Michael and Raphael was sickening. He would find this Renegade and warn him, at least. Help him, if he could, and perhaps convince him that Castiel was an Alpha worthy of his fledglings.

He ignored his self-preservation. It no longer existed. What was now in its place was an inarguable NEED to save his mate. There could be no other focus now. He flared his wings high over his head, knocking Raphael to the floor. Grabbing Michael by back of his neck, Castiel’s Alpha strength gave him the power to slam the Angel to the floor. Holding him there, he brought his lips to Michael’s ear, ignoring the coughing spray of blood and spittle.

In a Voice like thunder, the black winged Alpha simply said "Mine" before launching himself to the sky.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blitzdrake, you are the WIND beneath my WINGS (angel pun intended)

Charlie sharpened her machete as she watched the sunrise, soothed by the familiar back and forth motion and quiet swish of her work. She had learned long ago to find peace in her weaponry, greeting her blow dart gun and arrows like the old friends they were when she pulled them from the bottom of her pack. She was deep in meditation (Dean's scent next to her cool but not-quite-asleep) when Sam’s snores turned into one great snort and the Alpha shot up, looking around wildly. Kevin’s indignant squeak followed as he lost the added warmth of Sam’s wing.

She smiled indulgently at the two before meeting Dean’s tired eyes, her smile softening into something a little sadder. Dean’s scent had changed in the last day. Nothing significant, (Charlie was confident no one else had noticed the extra breath, under Dean’s unique pipe tobacco and pine base), but the hint of lavender that followed his creamy-warm Omega scent was all but buried under a new, sharper one. It somehow managed to make Dean smell even more masculine, and she imagined the other Omega would be pleased with it eventually. Maybe he’d stop freaking out about having scent suppressors all the time.

Although, Charlie supposed, there was at least one Alpha out there now who’d be able to pick Dean out of a crowd no matter what. They’d probably also have significant lavender undertones to their own scent, now. Assuming their new scent wasn't primarily charred flesh and bone. Scent mating wasn’t exactly rare, but it was almost always followed by an actual mating, and she wasn’t sure what the results would be, considering the fact that Dean’s was most likely in pieces. She felt sick with guilt and worry. If this Alpha was significant enough to change Dean's scent upon meeting, then it could only mean it was a True Mate, and Dean was in serious danger of going in to heat out of cycle.

A heat triggered by an emotional or physical event (such as meeting your True Mate seconds before they're torn to pieces) was usually difficult as a rule; but for suppressant-happy Dean, who hadn't had a full heat in at least a year, it could be deadly. Not having the Alpha in question available just made it that much worse, and she didn't think there was a suppressant powerful enough to stop an out of cycle heat. Unfortunately, most of her knowledge on the subject was theoretical. The information available on Omegas was pretty much non-existent were she was from.

Growing up as a Renegade in the capital wasn’t easy. There was a reason most Renegades attempted to escape Seraphic territory via the mountains or lived like gypsies out in the wild. Charlie’s life in the city was an ugly one, she knew now. As a child, she never questioned why only Seraphs were allowed to fly, or why no one who went past the fence in quarter without permission ever came back. She didn’t even know that fruit and vegetables grew from the earth; thinking they came from the monthly allotment of canned goods and nowhere else. They called the massive refugee camp Rainbow City, but even to a child, there wasn’t anything especially bright about the place.

She remembers being too cold in winter and too hot in summer, and always there was the noise; babies crying and sick ones coughing and families arguing and laughing and everyone living pressed too close. There was never any room for your wings. She remembers how the old ones terrified her with their contracted wings, years of arthritis and disuse causing them to be symptomatic of an all too common end. To this day she can still recall the smell of unwashed skin and feathers and piss and infected oil ducts pouring out of the dark corners of certain huts. She was always thankful her grandparents were long dead; she didn’t have to have an old one to take care of.

When Charlie was small, she could pretend to be a princess or a pirate, the shanty her and her mother lived in had endless possibilities for a child's imagination; but it was just warped plywood, graying and frayed tarp, and a piece of sun bleached Coca-Cola billboard. A hut just like any other in the ghetto she was raised in.  
In spite of her surroundings, Charlie was lucky, in a way. Her intelligence put her well above the curriculum offered in the local 'school'. By the time other fledglings her age were starting to fantasize about getting to work in a factory or serving rich humans, Charlie was burning through every advanced course available, updating the camp’s ancient computer software with her own programming.

Almost everyone in Rainbow City was a Beta, although there were a handful of Alphas. Renegade Omegas were non-existent, practically fairy tales from old books and movies, not something real, and Charlie never showed any of the old-wives’ tale 'signs' of an Alpha. So Charlie never thought about how she might present, there was never any worry she'd be anything but a Beta, until her mother contracted a type of pneumonia from the factory she worked in (day after day with no fresh air could cause any number of complications unique to Angels.)

For almost a week, her mother lay on the pile of blankets, pillows and feathers that passed as their nest (some had mattresses, or even better, hammocks) crippled by a high fever, and struggling for breath between wet-sounding coughing fits. Charlie had tried to buy medicine from people, even going far outside their 'neighborhood' in her search, but her mother hadn't missed work on payday, and she wasn't going to get paid for the previous week now anyway. The sad handful of coins left had only been enough for two aspirins, and Charlie hadn't even felt ripped off as she made her way back home. The hospital was only an option in life or death emergencies, because the bills were so high you'd end up in a prison before paying them off. Every day her mother grew sicker, though, and soon she stopped drinking and getting up to pee.

One day, as Charlie was bringing the water jug back, she found a neighbor standing outside their door. The woman worked in the same factory as her mother, and Charlie realized the she must've taken a day off to be there. An uncommonly sweet gesture, considering a day without work usually equaled a day without food. Her face was full of apologetic sympathy as she wrapped her wings around Charlie and told her an ambulance had been called. It took hours to arrive, and when it did, the driver refused to go past the gates; they had to carry her mother through the streets to get to it.

Within a day of arriving at the hospital, her mother’s condition went from bad to worse. When she was awake, she didn’t make much sense, asking long dead family members to shut the door or let the cats out. It didn't matter if the actual door was open or not, or that for Charlie's entire life they never even HAD a door, let alone a cat. She would stay that way for hours, barely dozing before snapping awake and thrashing out in confusion, beating her black and grey wings before her wild activity resulted in long and exhausting coughing fits. The longest any hospital staff were in the room with them was when they came to tie her down before dousing the room in scent blockers (both of which Charlie was immensely grateful for). After that, they only came into her mother’s room to change the I.V. bag when the alarms began to upset the other patients. They had been placed in a Renegade-only hall, and hours could go by before anyone would peek in. Charlie preferred it that way.

She was still a child, but Charlie wasn’t naïve, she knew her mother was dying. Knowing that she was going to die, however, didn’t make it any easier as she realized the last gurgling breath had come and gone. The sun was shining outside, and Perrigrin Took had just given a rousing "And now to bed! and now to bed!" in the eerie silence of The Woody End. There had been no significant last words, or promises made; at some point her mother had simply stopped babbling and coughing, and stayed that way. Charlie sat in the unexpected silence and felt nothing much at all, other than tired. She was now alone in the world and penniless; a Renegade with no family and on the wrong side of the city. She carefully dog-eared the page she’d been on and placed her head on her mother’s cooling thigh, suddenly gripped by complete exhaustion.

When Charlie woke up, it was obvious she’d been sleeping for several hours. Her mother’s face was bloodless and sunken; the room was dark. Her mouth and throat were like sand paper. She felt a sudden, gripping pain through her abdomen that left her breathless, and she wondered if she was dying, too, before a hot stream of fluid began pooling between her legs. For one wild moment, she was sure she was pissing herself. But then she smelled a new, but somehow familiar scent. There was a licorice-like quality to the orange-ish one that had followed her from toddler-hood. It was a soft scent, though. It made her think of something precious, something that needed protecting, or safe keeping. Like she had to keep whatever it was hidden away.

Then it hit her: like a girl in a trashy romance novel; she was in HEAT, she was presenting Omega.

It had sort of explained the way she had just fallen asleep like that; her body had been shutting down all unnecessary functions in order to trigger this heat. Losing the only person in world responsible for her well-being forced her body to call out for an Alpha to protect it.

Charlie realized she could smell everything. She could smell the fluid in the IV bag, the oxygen flowing uselessly through her mother’s nose, the perfumed wing oil her mother had used months ago. She could also smell the two Alphas down the hall; and the distinct lack of “protectiveness" in the scents rolling from under the door told her they had caught hers. It was DISGUSTING. She debated yelling for help, but if anybody even bothered to listen, they’d probably just join the party. She couldn’t really defend herself either. Even if she’d had a weapon, Charlie was ELEVEN. She hardly weighed eighty pounds, and these were full grown Alphas. Male Weres, her enhanced sense of smell informed her; not that the additional information even mattered.

As one of them knocked on the door fear choked every thought from her mind. When the adrenaline rush hit, though, her brain seemed to shut down, her body moving on autopilot. Dropping to the floor and sliding under the bed in a fluid motion, she tucked her wings in tight and braced her arms and legs on the bedframe, lifting her body off the ground. Her scent seemed to just- stop (or rather, take on the scents around it, like camouflage), and her heart rate slowed down, as did her respirations. If she’d had more control over herself at the time, it would have been terrifying. As it was, a sense of calm washed over her, and she KNEW those Alphas weren’t going to find her now.

Her memories of that night became disjointed after that, but she remembered walking out of the hospital room in search of an exit, and later, finding herself standing on the hospital roof like she belonged there. She remembered stretching her wings as far as she could, admiring them in the glow of street lights, the pain in her stomach having faded to a dull throb. She noticed for the first time the fringe along her feathers and concluded they must have turned up during her molt last month. She flared each wonderful wing, curling them up in a display to rival any Alpha’s. She wasn’t some simpering princess locked in the tower; she was the dragon- submissive to no one; free from everyone. She stood above them all and laughed, fearless and loud. The new Omega braced herself before leaning forward until gravity pulled her from the ledge, gliding down to the street in total silence. In hindsight, her uncharacteristic recklessness may have been caused by a bit of an adrenaline high at the time.

As her worn sneakers hit the cement, she was blinded by an intense light. A stern Alpha Voice bellowed “Hands and wings to the ground!” and she was caught.

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Her first heat, as it had turned out, wasn’t so bad. She had been tranquilized and tossed into a (literal, though extremely large) cage, and was given nothing but a gallon jug filled with rusty water. The conditions were less than ideal, but excusable, as she was left mercifully alone. She rode out the worst of it in the second day, and by the third she could tell it was over. It didn’t seem like the kind of heat she’d read about; it had felt more like a bad stomach virus than a desperate need.

One thing those trashy romance novels had been right about, though; the lack of physical touch had been difficult to handle. Charlie wasn’t the most touchy-feely kid out there, but never in her life had she gone more than a few hours without someone touching her shoulder or grasping an elbow, or brushing a friend’s wing with her own. The heat had made her want nothing more than to curl up with as many familiar Angels as possible and stay there for a year.

Coming down from the fever, she was finally able to examine her surroundings; noticing first the crusty jeans she had peeled off the day before. At least she was still wearing underwear. Fluorescent lights hummed high above a large cement room, punctuated by rectangular pillars. A small door was off to the right, and although she couldn’t see how far it went, the other side of the room appeared to go back quite a ways.

She sniffed, finding nothing too unsurprising: Alpha stink, Omega heat, Beta every-frickin-where, all of it at least a day old. She sniffed again and almost face palmed. Diesel. It was overpowering. She had been trying to smell from the bottom up, digging through the fainter scents first. The possible-parking-garage-thing wasn’t encouraging, either, let alone the LITERAL CAGES around her; large enough for at least five adults and haphazardly lined up on either side of hers. They were all empty.

She was suddenly too mad to be afraid and her hormones were making her feel wild. She wanted to fight and tear at something. She really wanted a hug. Hot tears of frustration poured down her face and she let them fall. She was going to die, soon, hopefully. Ending up with the type of people who put other people in cages didn’t bode well, but in spite of this, Charlie wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The memory of the hospital room and confronting her true (albeit a little crazy) self on the roof gave her another surge of confidence. She was an Angel, and a Renegade; she was going to make sure her captors thought twice before kidnapping another Omega. Charlie sighed. Death was going to HURT.

She sat in tense silence for several more hours before the air finally began to change. There was a growing scent that had her new found Omega both desperate to reach it and to shy away. She let her upstairs brain make the choice and she curled around herself in a corner, thinking small, hidden thoughts.

The door opened with a shriek and she flinched but didn’t look up. The scent was powerful. No, the scent was POWER. Ozone and rain. It crippled her sense of thought, and once again, baser instincts took control. Before she knew it, Charlie had her palms flat to the ground, resting on her elbows and knees, wings so flat they ached. There was nothing pleasant about the scent, although it was definitely Alpha.

“YOU have a lot of sand, for an Omega.”

Her wings began to tremble and she tried to force them to be still while pulling them over her head to hide away from the terrible Voice

"Do not attempt to hide from ME, little Omega. I don’t appreciate disrespect. Look at me.”

She raised her eyes as much as she could without lifting her head, before relenting and raising her chin off the floor; before her stood a Seraph. She was tall, and lithe, with coffee skin and dreadlocks that must have been quite long, when they weren’t tied back in a complicated bun. Her pinstriped suit was immaculate, and her wings were enormous. They were so WHITE, as if they actually chased away darkness.

“Good. Do you know who I am, Charlie?” Charlie trembled and looked down helplessly. The Alpha didn’t wait for an answer, continuing in an almost inflectionless tone. “I am Raphael. You will refer to me only as Alpha, and you will rejoice, for you now belong to me.”

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For the next two years, Charlie lived in The Capital Towers, home to the Seraphic hierarchy. In a way, it was a far better life than she could have imagined growing up. She was always clean and fed, and she was educated in appropriate Omega behavior. Raphael insisted her Omega be presentable, both in appearance and sound, though the opportunity to speak was rarely granted.

Most of the nonsense Charlie had to learn was about siting and kneeling properly, using the right words and keeping her eyes down. The information Raphael's library had available on Omega anatomy was mostly garbage, and based on Seraphic Omegas anyway. Charlie soon realized despite the romantic stories she'd read about the submissive nature of all Omegas, she herself was a tough nut to crack. Scent and wing could only get an Angel so far with her, (although she rarely pushed her luck.) She didn’t know if this was because she was damaged by an early heat, or if it had something to do with being a Renegade.

As far as she knew, there WERE no other Renegade Omegas to compare notes with. All she had to go on was her own experience and the studies of other species. Such as Weres, who seemed to have been dealt the crappiest Omega card. It sounded like THEY had to either prepare ahead of time and stay locked up for a week, or risk jumping on the first knot they could find (no wonder there were so many Weres out there.) Or Seraphs, who had some of the lowest Omega numbers themselves, but their Omegas had (for reasons unknown) started dropping significantly in intelligence over the last century or so (although this wasn’t common knowledge.) Seraphs treated their Omegas like horny children at best, and prefabricated sex-slaves at worst. This was a horrifying discovery, as she realized she was the property of an Alpha Seraph famous for her cruelty. Raphael liked to make thinly veiled suggestions to potential allies that perhaps she would breed Charlie when she was more developed, but Gods help anyone who approached the Alpha with the suggestion themselves. Raphael did not share her toys. She realized then how lucky it was that she belonged to the powerful Alpha who seemed to find the act of sex itself to be beneath her.

She insisted her Omega remain completely untouched, clinging to the older notions about purity. That was just fine for Charlie, but as she grew older and her heats became heavier, she learned the horrible torture of being stuck in a cage for three days while going through heat alone. It turned out the one thing the Alpha hated most were Charlie’s heats. She wanted Charlie always clean and alert, her intelligence was a point of pride for Raphael; she saw her heats as proof of her lack of potential and punished her for it.  
Raphael was amused when Charlie showed a gift for computers, intrigued when it became apparent the Omega was more prodigy than talent. She soon had Charlie working on hacking human networks and constantly updating firewalls for the hundreds of communications systems used by Seraphs daily. Eventually, Charlie was given an office adjacent to the small apartment Raphael had provided for her, and she rarely left it. It was far away from any exits, and of course there were no windows, but Raphael’s own apartments were on the other end of the wing, next to her brother Michael’s, and Charlie was always appreciative of the distance.

As long as Charlie kept her eyes down and her mouth shut, for the most part Raphael was pleased. Of course, if the Alpha became DISPLEASED, the results were downright traumatizing. Raphael’s scent was all consuming, and Charlie was utterly defenseless against it.

The kind of scenting power Raphael wielded was rare, and the Seraph had used it to her advantage as she pulled her brother with her to the top of command at an early age. The stories Charlie overheard on how the two Alphas orchestrated such a coup were nauseatingly violent, and the Omega believed every word of them. Raphael had this way of looking at someone; like a slow and painful death for the other party was a reasonable conclusion to any conversation.

According to one story, Raphael had been forced by the Council to take on more administrative duties, after what was meant to be a detention mission (with a possible skirmish) turned into the Battle of Stull. Details were always murky, of course, but one could assume the worst if a general was taken off duty after WINNING the battle. It had all worked out for her in the end, though; now that particular Council was long gone, and the one she had raised in its place ten years prior was mostly just for show.  
Charlie always kept these many disturbing truths in mind whenever she had to be in the Alpha’s presence. Although as an Omega it appeared she was unique to Renegades, she understood how expendable Raphael considered all living things to be. A step, sound or scent at the wrong moment could have her out of Raphael’s good graces and in the ground.

So when Raphael had her summoned, Charlie always reluctantly left her computer and hurried to dress in whatever was required of her. At thirteen, Charlie was still thin, but she was taller, too. The well-balanced diet she didn't have a child was put to good use as her body matured. Unlike the preferred Omega ideal, Charlie's breasts and buttocks remained small and tight, though her small waistline and narrow shoulders were often overlooked, in favor of long shapely legs and a slender neck. Remaining inside kept her skin unmarred and creamy pale. That, coupled with her long red hair and bright yellow wings, made her a desirable conversation piece.

She started finding herself sitting in on more intimate affairs and business meetings. Depending on the occasion, she either knelt at Raphael’s feet or sat off to the side. One of Raphael’s favorite games to play was to have Charlie stand behind her in a business suit of her own while the Omega stared down whatever human politician she was negotiating with. Sometimes even the worldlier of the species had the strangest notions about Angels, ideas such as Omegas having special abilities like mind reading, or that an Alpha and an Omega working in unison could combine their mystical powers and burn your eyes from your skull. It was crazy, what an educated human was willing to believe.  
There had been a few of these meetings lately, so when Charlie was commanded to dress for supper instead of bed one night, she assumed it was more of the same. She pulled on the wispy material of an emerald green gown that had been left on her bed and draped her wings in the thin iron chains that symbolized her enslavement to Raphael. No one had left her a pair of shoes, or any other accessories for that matter, so she must be aiming for sweet and stupid tonight.

She waited by her door for the guard to arrive and unlock it. A Beta retired from the guard (most who didn’t want to leave the military, but were too old to be of use, ended up here if they were lucky) led her to Raphael’s personal dining room, where a small table was set for two. A large grey pillow was on the floor next to one of the chairs, and Charlie obediently knelt down upon it and arranged her wings and eyes in supplication. This was... different. Usually Raphael preferred Charlie on display like this during larger parties; not small, late night meals.

Before she could wonder for too long, Charlie caught the scent of Michael approaching with his sister. She swallowed her irrational rush of fear at the second scent quickly, reminding herself that she was more afraid of Raphael than Michael. It was odd, though. to be smelling him at all when he was meant to be out overseeing military activity. Michael was never one to leave the field early.  
The door opened and Charlie smelled her master enter first, followed closely by Michael, who was doused in suppressant. Charlie tried not to wrinkle her nose. She had never bothered to tell anyone she could smell through suppressants, it wasn’t perfect anyway. She couldn’t smell whatever was wrong with the Alpha that resulted in him returning and using suppressants in his own house, but the smell of blockers and average Alpha reek still followed him.

Raphael draped herself next to Charlie, carding her hand through her one of the Omega's wings before catching one of the fastened chains and looping it around Charlie's wrists with a few well practiced movements. She pulled gently, and Charlie raised her arms above her head obediently. Raphael made a soft cooing sound in approval, before absently petting along the lemon yellow primaries of the closest wing. She tried to be grateful the chain wasn't wrapped around her neck this time, but Charlie hated the Alpha’s touch and had to get her bearings quickly to keep her scent neutral. As she did, Michael watched the interplay of Raphael, chain, and Charlie, with an unusual focus.

“Are you trying to goad me into a fight, Sister?”

“Brother.” Raphael replied with false sincerity. “I am wounded that you would think me so petty. I simply wanted my Omega near me. Her obedience gives me comfort.”

Michael slammed a fist on the table, startling Charlie and causing Raphael to twist the chain in her fist briefly. The painful bite of metal links digging into her helped to smooth out the burst of fear from her scent, and before Raphael loosened her grip Charlie was back to emanating the mild contentment she didn't feel.

“You brought it here to mock what you believe to be my failure!”

“Failure.” And suddenly Raphael’s unpredictable rage was pooling in the back of Charlie’s throat. The Omega fought the urge to cough and laid her head on the floor in fear, straining her arms so the Alpha wouldn’t have to move her hand from the chain. The scent of her own fear was leaking through, and Charlie breathed deep in an attempt to cover the blinding power of Raphael's temper.

“My dear brother does not fail. He is a warrior of God; the envy of Alphas everywhere. How could he fail and yet still walk in my presence?” The sip she took from her glass was like a roar in the silence, the Alpha's scent finally relaxing into a less terrifying irritation.

“Why would my brother even know the word?” She continued. “One Omega has the great Michael on his knees in defeat.” Charlie’s mind whirled at the words. Raphael couldn’t mean HER; Michael had threatened her more than once, and every time it had left Charlie shaking.

“It is not a NORMAL Omega!” Was Michael POUTING? “It is twisted by the unholy confusion of its designation!”

“Excuses. The Omega is not the problem Michael, YOU are. You believe having a knot means not having to work.” She ignored her brother’s scoff. This argument was so old between them even Charlie had heard it before.

“If you truly think there is only one way to dominate an Omega, I suggest you wait until it’s in heat. I ask you to look at my Omega.” Charlie tensed. “I have never had to break her. She CAME to me, and bowed before me as her master because nature demanded it of her.” The terror of Alpha anger kept Charlie from rolling her eyes (is THAT what Raphael really thinks happened?) “She does not NEED a knot to submit. Bring the Omega to me and I will bring it to heal at my-“

“NO!” Another fist to the table as the scent of Michael's frustration flashed through the suppressants. “I searched for this one for YEARS. He is mine and only mine." His scent flowed into one of confidence. "God has brought these Omegas to us as a blessing, as proof that our way is righteous-”

Raphael barked out a soulless laugh, the condescending rush that flowed from her making Charlie blush in secondhand embarrassment. “You cannot possibly believe your own tripe. GOD? God is dead, Michael. There is only nature. And nature has sent us these Omegas as a warning. When was the last time you knew of a Renegade Omega? There hasn’t been one registered before mine in DECADES. What does that tell you?”

Michael remained silent, a cloud of petulance rolling off him in waves.

“It TELLS you, dear Brother, that evolution has once again betrayed us. The sudden drop in the Renegade population has their offspring presenting Omega for the first time in generations, while our Omegas grow more frail and infertile. We can’t even know how many the Renegades have now. You have a MALE OMEGA down there! WE haven’t had a male Omega since Zachariah’s little pet choked on his own blood in childbirth. Something has to be done-”

"Perhaps God would be more active in our campaigns if you would make an effort to cull the darkness from our flock."  
Raphael's anger rolled in like a slow fog, hidden behind a wave of disbelief at her brother's interruption. Michael's sense of self-preservation must've finally kicked in, Charlie thought; his scent was finally starting to carry some fear.

Seemingly satisfied, Raphael sighed heavily and relaxed into her seat, though her scent remained dangerous. “We digress. I did not ask you here to argue Omega husbandry and freakish Alphas; I invited you here to celebrate, Michael.”

Michael took a noisy gulp of his drink and said nothing. Raphael’s feathers rustled. Charlie kept her forehead firmly on the floor. The tension in the room was dizzying.

“Michael, what if I told you I had within my grasp the ultimate weapon? One word that could end this Great War and bring about Paradise?”

“I would say; if you were to tell me that, sister, that you have my attention.”

She dropped Charlie’s chain and stood. “I want you to understand, it’s not quite ready for live testing, BUT, when I am done, there will be no Renegades, no leeches or wild dogs; no humans. Nothing left upon this earth other than us. Paradise.”

“Go on…”

“Croatoan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nO RAGREtS, yo!


	6. Chapter 6

Charlie always tried to push her luck with her heats. She would struggle to mask her scent for as long as possible, hoping to avoid the cage. Ironically, as she became better at manipulating her scent to suit her needs, her heats became more powerful and difficult to mask. Every cycle resulted in a more potent, harder to cover heat that seemed to soak the halls for a week after. She had been hoping Raphael’s absence would have allowed her to stay in her rooms, but no such luck. Even when she wasn’t around, fear of the Alpha kept her orders followed to the letter.

Four days after Raphael’s supper, Charlie found herself dragged from her computer and tossed in an all too familiar cage. She knew now the ‘parking garage’ was actually a loading dock, used for slave trafficking and the transfer of the kind of prisoners Seraphs didn’t want anyone else to know about. It wasn’t used very often, however. They preferred to keep the image of Capital Towers as clean as possible.

The only time Charlie had ever had to share a cage with another was after a truck due to pick up a load of prisoners had been delayed, (or attacked) leaving a nest of Vampires to languish for several days. The Omega that she’d shared space with was sympathetic, but she didn’t seem to know what to do with a barely presented Angel in heat. The prisoner had stayed on one side of the cell for the duration of her stay.

This time, however, it was another Angel with her; the first Renegade she’d seen in two years. He looked to be about her age, clearly underfed, but broad shouldered and wiry, as opposed to thin. His arms were long and his palms were large, and his wings were magnificent; an iridescent indigo that left her breathless. A sudden gush of slick sent her to the corner opposite him, where she curled up in humiliation.

He smelled wild, like pine trees and lavender and wind. This was no city boy; he could probably fly, too. He didn’t smell bad, at least, from what she was able to pick up. His scent was off, though. Like a radio that kept coming in and out of frequency. It didn’t have the bitter edge of a chemical suppressant, but the blank spaces gave a similar impression none the less. It wasn’t reassuring. The fear of being stuck in there with an Alpha during her heat was perhaps more of a phobia, considering Raphael’s possessive nature regarding her things, but that never stopped Charlie from worrying.

"If you come near me" she said in a frustratingly shaky voice, "I’m going to kill you."

He gave a half hearted chuckle. "Easy there, tiger. You’re a’right." His voice was deep, like an Alpha’s.

She sniffed again. "Why are you wearing suppressants?"

"I’m not WEARING them, I TOOK them. You know, like a pill?"

"They have a pill for that?"

He scoffed. "Not for Angels; they’re for Weres, but they work okay." He continued in a more subdued voice "Thought they flushed em outta me though."

"Isn’t that dangerous, taking someone else’s suppressants?" It sounded suicidal, actually, but she didn’t even know this guy’s designation yet, and pissing off an Alpha while in heat was also suicidal.

"Who gives a crap? Look around, sister. Our entire species is just a ticking clock; why would I care about something that could kill me in ten years, when there are so many things that can kill me today?"

She couldn’t help the snort that came out at that. "Dude, you have no idea."

He raised his eyebrows and flared his wings slightly, approaching her slowly. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Charlie caught his scent finally, and gasped. "You’re an OMEGA!" she couldn’t resist grabbing his shoulders and squeezing tightly; as if he would slip away now that she knew what he was "I thought I was the only one! You… YOU’RE Michael’s Omega! The one he’s going to…"

The Omega’s scent suddenly broke through in full, and the raw anger there had Charlie wrapping her wings around herself.

"The one he’s going to what? Kill? Torture? Well I got news for you little sister; he’s not getting a damn word outta me! I don’t care how many more fucked up ways there are to get a guy to talk, and trust me, I have."

Charlie looked through her feathers at the boy. His eyes were wide and his jaw was clenched. There were fading bruises underneath the smudges of dirt. "No, he’s not going to kill you. It’s…. I’m sorry." She started to cry. Stupid heat. She wanted to do was wrap her wings around this stranger and take in as much of this familial Omega scent as she could, and comfort him in return. Miraculously, he seemed to understand, and shuffled over so he was sitting next to her now, mantling his larger wings over her and murmuring well-practiced reassurances.

She also wanted to push him away, to yell at him, show how strong she was and tell him she wasn’t a fledgling, she’d been doing this alone since she was eleven damn it! But it felt so GOOD. Finally, after years of not understanding what she needed, only that she couldn’t have it, an Omega like HER was here with her. She laid her head down in his lap and relaxed her wings, for once not bothering to mask her scent.

He began absently carding his fingers through her feathers, coating them lightly with her oil and rearranging the crooked ones. She moaned a little when he pulled one out that had been bugging her for weeks. He chuckled. "When was the last time someone groomed your wings, kid?"

She sighed, almost asleep. "Not a kid." Then, "Well; the showers here are amazing, but, couple years? Before my mom died, that’s for sure." He stopped moving his hand and she wiggled a little in irritation. He picked up the signal and continued with both hands this time.

"A couple of YEARS?" He asked. "And you spend your heats down here, too? Alone? Every time?"

"Unless there’s other prisoners in here, yeah. Why? You spend yours WITH someone?"

His hand paused again briefly. "I don’t… I’ve only had a couple. The suppressants I took kept them away. Keeps Alphas off my tail, anyway." His tone aimed for nonchalance, but it held a level of fear they were both familiar with.

"Pretty cool how you can do that with your scent, though." He continued. "I mean, when you first came in here, I thought I was going crazy, cuz you smelled so calm and relaxed, but you were obviously freaking out."

"Why is that so impressive to you? You’re doing it right now, too. I thought it was suppressants, but you’re just like, masking everything. It’d be more suspicious if you didn’t have the oral suppressants story, though. Everyone just thinks I’m an idiot or something, cuz I always smell happy. You should try it."

"I’m not in control of it." The boy said "Not like you are. Mine does… stuff… sometimes, but I can’t MAKE it do anything."

"Sure you can, you just have to work on it; it helps if you squeeze your oil glands and-"

"Not happening."

"But-"

"Nope, been doing this for years without touching those things. No reason to change now."

"Wait; how old ARE you? When did you PRESENT?"

The boy thought a moment. "I think my first heat was when I was nine, but I managed to keep them to myself till I was eleven."

"Yeesh, that’s young." They continued in silence, Charlie drifting in a half-daze as she allowed this stranger to groom her like some sort of long lost brother. It was like some cheesy Lifetime movie. Or maybe more like Cinemax. The thought made her snort. He made a noise of inquiry and she shook her head.

"Nothing," she said "just- I mean, look at the two of us; ‘Dear Penthouse Forum’; you know?"

To her surprise, the other Omega barked out a loud, boisterous laugh. He slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound as it echoed through the garage.

"Like every knot-head’s wet-dream; or a bad BDSM flick."

"Oh gods, that’s an unpleasant image. New subject. My name is Charlie, by the way."

"Dean."

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah, Charlie?"

"B’Elanna Torres or Seven of Nine?"

"Oh, we’re gonna get along great."

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

All things considered, Dean took the news (that Michael had every intention of waiting for the male Omega to go in to heat before brutally raping and claiming him against his will) relatively well.

"Man," Dean said, resigned. "I was really planning on making it past fourteen."

"Umm, whatcha mean?" Charlie had insisted on grooming Dean as well, marveling at the colors that bloomed underneath her fingers.

"I’m just saying, I’ve been planning to get back to Kansas for my baby brother for three years now. It sucks I’ll never find out what happened to him."

"Still not following."

Dean turned to look her in the eye and she held his gaze, but barely. "My dad taught me how to fight. I’m freeborn, and I’m gonna die that way."

Charlie looked away then; the conviction in him was far beyond any that she had ever experienced. Life for her had always just BEEN. It may not have always been worth living, but it wasn’t worth dying for, either.

"What’s it like? Being free, I mean."

"I dunno. It’s like… wondering if the next meal or breath might be your last, but then each time you take a bite; it’s the most delicious food you’ve ever tasted, and every breath is clean and cool, because it’s been fought for."

There was an awkward silence after that. Charlie didn’t really know how to respond. Fortunately, Dean was the King of Awkward Silences, and he cut through the tension with a joke so dirty she would never be allowed to forget it.

"Ugh! Knots are so GROSS!" She squealed in response. Dean raised an eyebrow. "Sorry. Just picturing… THAT…is just… ugh. No. Why? Why do you KNOW that?"

He continued to stare at her. "Kay. So, you’re an Omega, and you’re in HEAT, and just the THOUGHT of a knot makes you sick? How does that work?"

"Um, it WORKS just FINE, thank you very much. Alphas just smell gross, and it’s not just knots that are icky; no offence, but penises are weird and" She shuddered before continuing. "Besides, you just argued with me for an hour on the attractiveness of a fictional FEMALES. You can’t tell me THAT’S not weird. I mean, what would you even DO with another Omega? You have a teeny peen anyway."

"Okay, right here and now, I’m gonna to tell you, I do NOT have a small dick. I don’t know what fucked up dime novel bullshit you’ve read that makes you think all male Omegas have tiny units, but I can say with full confidence; mine is just as big, if not bigger, than any Alpha’s and I can prove it, too."

"Oh my-, please Gods no! Don’t!"

"Uncover your eyes, I was kidding. Not about the big junk thing," Dean added quickly "that’s real. But anyway, yeah, I like Alphas, and Betas, and Omegas, I mean, I just don’t think a person’s designation should be the defining factor in whether I have sex with them." He paused. "Or HAD sex, anyway. Theoretically speaking. Basically, IF I WERE to have sex with someone, gender really don’t matter." His scent turned sad. "Now I’m looking FORWARD to dying a virgin dude."

Charlie rolled her eyes. "I can’t believe THAT’S the part that’s getting to you. I mean, we’re ALL gonna die soon and YOUR biggest issue is leaving this earth a virgin."

"Yeah, Charlie, about that; what the fuck did you mean earlier with the whole "you have no idea" thing? Is there something you’re not telling me, or are you just a fan of ominous, doomsday shit?"

Charlie pulled her hands out of her new friend’s wings and rested them in her lap, looking down. Dean turned to face her, sitting cross-legged and wrapping his wings around her in comfort.

She sighed heavily and kept her chin down as she spoke. Dean leaned in closer. "Raphael is my Alpha. The other day, it must have been the night Michael brought you here because they talked about you a little bit, but, Raphael said she had this way of wiping out all other species, even humans, so only Seraphs were left."

"What like a bomb?"

"No, like biological warfare. A kind of disease that only Seraph’s would be immune to."

"That’s fucking INSANE. How the fuck- can they DO that?"

"Raphael seems to think so. I looked through all the files on it, about half of it is still theoretical, but, they’ve got the basics down. It’s only a matter of time before it can be developed in a lab safely."

"Wait," Dean looked deep in thought "When you say you looked through all the files…"

"I mean, I looked through all the files. It’s like my job. I go through the various systems and look for viruses, update the servers, all kinds of stuff. I can do the work of ten people with the added bonus of Raphael owning every damn feather I have."

"So you can stop this! You can stop all of this from happening!"

Charlie shook her head sadly. "If I tried anything like that, Raphael would find out eventually, and she wouldn’t kill me, she’d break me; until I begged for death and then she’d make sure I lived to be very old. I’ve seen her do it. It’s pointless. She’d just make me fix whatever I did anyway."

Dean mulled this over for a bit. "But what if you did something to the system, and then just- weren’t there for the ‘eventually’ part? Like, what if we busted out?"

Charlie laughed. "BUSTED OUT? As in; escape? Are you HIGH? You don’t just walk away from Capital Towers. No one escapes the Seraph, ever. Especially an Omega. Do you know the LIFE expectancy of an Omega Angel? TWENTY SEVEN. Welcome to your midlife crisis, Dean!" Another flow of slick came with a burst of watery wing oil, and Charlie shuddered and backed away, regretting the distance instantly. Dean scooted after her, of the same mind to be closer.

"First of all" He said calmly "I highly doubt you meant Renegade Omegas when you said that, because as far as I know, we’re IT. So if you’re trying to compare yourself to those poor girls that Seraphs treat like literal baby machines, I think your research is a little off. And how can you say no one has ever escaped the Seraph, since I’ve escaped them TWICE."

Charlie couldn’t help it; "YOU did NOT." came out before she thought better of it. It was just such a ridiculous notion.

But Dean appeared to relish the challenge, saying "You wanna hear how I did it?"

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here thar be porns  
> ...(kinda)  
> mind the tags, dearies

Charlie really DID want to hear how Dean had managed to stay alive on his own for so long, but she wanted to know everything about life outside the city, too. So after a couple of anecdotes about his little brother and some racy, not very funny, jokes, the male Omega began to open up, telling her about his life leading up to this latest capture.

Dean’s grandfather had been a war-hero, and had raised his son to be a soldier. After his father’s death, John honored his memory by organizing and executing as many attacks on Seraphs as possible. The Alpha and his flock earned the nickname Hunters, due to the specific search-and-destroy guerilla tactics they used.

The Hunters made a space for themselves, and their families, in a tangle of deep forest far from the main cities but still within Allied territory. It was well hidden, but still sky-accessible if one could manage to climb through the thick canopy. It was also the perfect trap, the day Raphael and her soldiers turned it all to ashes.

John and his team had left the encampment unguarded. Even their children could handle a weapon, of course, but only those able to fight from every flock in the area went to war that day. It was believed that Michael and Raphael, along with several Council members, would be present for a factory reopening just a few miles away, and although it sounded almost too good to be true, the source had been reliable.

When the Renegades made to attack, the Council members were nowhere to be found, and the small honor guard they had expected was a force at least three times larger. It was a slaughter.

John’s wife, Mary, and their two sons, managed to escape Raphael’s flames, but the fierce Beta could only hide her fledglings before she was captured.

Four year old Dean had watched the events at Stull with his arms burning under the weight of his six month old brother, who silently clung as tight as his tiny limbs would allow, before accepting sleep as the sun came up. Dean tucked them into a hollow tree and stayed there, the way he hadn’t after his mother had been caught. Maybe if he’d been good for her, the way his dad had told him to be before he’d left, she wouldn’t be stuck in the hole. Maybe his dad wouldn’t let him be a Hunter now. The thought almost made him start to cry, but he stopped himself when he thought of waking up Sammy. Dad hated it when Dean cried, especially if it woke the baby, and Dad was already going to be mad when he found out Dean hadn’t listened to Mom.

Dean woke up to midafternoon light and a strange, almost-familiar-but-not-right scent. He pulled his wing away, and tried to rearrange the clump of feathers that Sammy (who was sitting next to him) had been gumming on happily. The weird smell was gone now, covered over by Sammy’s stinky-pee-stink. All his nappies were back at the camp, and Dean didn’t know where that was from wherever THEY were. A large branch snapped and the little Angels looked up, both staring wide-eyed at their father, who was covered in mud and blood; the source of the not-right smell.

John Winchester usually smelled like whiskey, vanilla, and old leather. But the Renegade standing near them smelled out of control. Like fear and rage, and grief. The baby leaned into his older brother and whimpered in fear, and John whipped his head around at the sound. He flared his dark green wings and strode toward his sons, pulling Sam up and holding him close. Dean could smell relief under the rage, and it gave him the courage to crawl out. When his father looked at him though, the relief flashed into a cold fury. Sammy finally started to cry.

“Where’s your mother, Dean?” His lack of emotion was more frightening than the scent.

That’s when Dean knew; mom wasn’t getting out of the hole. Nobody was. Dean didn’t understand True Mates, or what that all meant, but he could smell his mother’s death in his father’s scent. He could smell the difference in John Winchester; now that Mary’s soothing vanilla was gone. The man glaring down at him was in his father’s body, but he was broken beyond repair.

Dean raised his chin and stood straight and tall, looking into John’s eyes like the soldier he wanted to be. He pointed a chubby finger off to his right; Dean didn’t realize he was shaking until then. “She’s in the’we.” He tried to keep the lisp out of his voice.

John glanced down at his oldest child and his face turned hard. “You were supposed to stay at the camp.”

Dean said nothing. In fact, it was over a week later before Dean spoke again; when a deeply concerned Bobby handed the boy a smaller fork for his meatloaf. A tiny ‘Thank you Uncle Bobby’, spoken so softly the man wasn’t sure he had heard it at all. It made his heart soar, to know the kid hadn’t been completely fried by whatever had happened to him. The man had replied with a gruff “Speak up, boy.” He wasn’t much of a fathering type.

Bobby had worked with John and his men once or twice, Bobby’s wife had been a Renegade and he fought hard for the Angels after her death. John was good man, a good husband and father, too, as far as Bobby could tell. Other Renegades seemed to look to John like a leader, and Bobby was proud to call him a friend. But when John turned up on his front porch with two babies and a dead look in his eye, Bobby had a feeling things weren’t going to be the same. He was right.

When John wasn’t falling down drunk and screaming at his oldest, he was teaching the little boy how to kill. For hours, if he was sober, John would make Dean throw a knife over and over, or fly in circles around the property until his wings gave out. He’d hear the Angel say things like “It’s your job to protect your brother.” And “Are you LISTENING to me? If you had listened to me about staying at the camp and keeping an eye on everyone- you need to listen now.” Bobby didn’t think it was right, to raise a kid that way, but it wasn’t really his place to be interfering with fathers, or Angel business.

Still, when John would leave for days, sometimes weeks, “searching for Raphael”, (or any Seraph, probably) Bobby would do his best to educate Dean on the points of life that didn’t involve the many different ways to murder something. He’d do his best to teach him the Angel lore he knew, encouraged him to play around with his baby brother, and even let him bring home little critters to ‘fix up’. The kid was a nurturer at heart, and it pained Bobby to think of this new John stomping that out.

And that was the thing of it; John wasn’t the same man he had been when Mary had been alive. From what Bobby understood of supernaturals and mating, JOHN shouldn’t be alive. He figured the Alpha was running on fumes, so to speak, living to avenge his Mate and ensure his sons would survive without him.

But it just wasn’t the right way to treat a child. Arguing with John was pointless, though, Dean was HIS son; he was gonna raise him the way he wanted, and Bobby couldn’t disagree with that.

It all came to a head late one night as a storm was starting to move in. Bobby woke up to an odd feeling in his gut. Not one to ignore instinct, he rolled out of bed and checked on the boys. Karen’s sewing room had been turned into a bedroom after their arrival, and as much as Bobby wished they’d just sleep on a damn bed, the boys would always end up in the cubby at the top of the closet, wings crisscrossed over each other just like baby birds. It damn near gave him a heart attack the first time he found them like that, but the Angels never fell.

Bobby harrumphed when he saw Dean wasn’t in his usual space on top of the dresser (the closet had gotten a little cramped over the last couple years) and he double checked to make sure he wasn’t up there with Sam (who had taken to gliding around after his big brother like a little red shadow, now that he was going on two and a half). If John ever slept, it was in the barn loft.

Thinking maybe Dean had wandered down there to check on his dad, Bobby pulled on his boots and tossed on a jacket; crossing his fingers that he wouldn’t get caught in a downpour. Entering the barn from the side door near the empty horse stalls, he couldn’t see much from where he was. He reached for the lantern and stopped mid-reach. A sharp bite of laughter had come from the direction of the loft, followed by a low groan.

In darkness, Bobby approached his barn loft quietly, knowing if John was up there and paying attention (and not up to something) the Angel would hear him. Bobby climbed the ladder silently, and froze in disbelief at what he saw.

Off to the right, on an old stack of hay, sat Martin, one of John’s old buddies that Bobby would have sworn was dead. Martin looked a little worse for wear since the last time Bobby saw him, his brown and cream colored wings looked pretty filthy, and he had defiantly dropped a few pounds. The Renegade looked happy though, down right gleeful, as he watched the proceedings under the weak bulb in the center of the loft.

John had one hand on the blade of a knife, the other hand on six year old Dean’s shoulder, with a look on his face and a tone in his voice like he was giving him a few pointers before sending him up to bat. Dean had the same kind of look; nodding his head with a too serious glint to his eye.

That pissed Bobby off something fierce, it really did. To see John, getting a little kid up in the middle of the night and teaching him knife tactics with a reclusive madman. But that wasn’t the part that set the human off. It was messed up and stupid, yes, but the truly insane part; the part that had him choking back bile and white knuckling the ladder, was the Angel that John and Martin had tied to a chair.

Bobby figured he was a Seraph, but was hard to tell for sure, what with the poor lighting and the blood soaking through the few feathers he had left. He was more strapped to the chair than tied down, because restraint entailed some ability to resist, and this Angel was obviously being held up by the coarse ropes, as opposed to being held back.

Covered in grime and both dried and fresh blood, what little skin that could be considered clean was deathly pale. His knees, ankles, wings and wrists were all bent at sickening angles, and the lattice work of cuts that covered his arms and chest were oozing dark blood slowly. Although the Seraph was skin and bone, in a way that suggested years of skipped meals, the soft, sagging skin, silvery stretch marks on his breasts and belly, as well as the wide hips, told Bobby this was a galvah, a male Omega Angel that had birthed children.

Karen’s beloved Great Galvah Edgar had been her oldest living relative by far (and one of the few who had approved of the marriage). They had cared for Edgar at the end of his life, and Bobby himself buried the Angel. The size of the pool of blood around the chair told Bobby this galvah wasn’t going to live through the night.

He thought nothing could be more horrific than torturing one of these rare and famously fragile Seraphic Omegas, but as little Dean hefted the blade in his hand, and said in a steady, toneless voice “Who is wesponsible fo Stull.” before dragging the knife along the now silent Angel’s skin, Bobby was reminded of the valuable lesson behind the phrase: it could always be worse.

The fight between John and Bobby that night was intense, but over pretty quick once Bobby came back from the house with a shot gun. John left that night, (after taking care of the body, because he "wasn’t the type of man to leave a mess behind") and told/warned Bobby he’d be back soon to get his sons.

He never so much as glanced at Dean during the confrontation; and John's last words for him had been the Alpha looking him in the eye and explaining how important inflection and tone were when using one’s Alpha Voice, as he handed his son a bloody knife.

After Dean swore up and down that he had never done something like that before, and that he understood why he shouldn’t listen to his dad anymore (Bobby was NOT fooled by the latter), things settled into something almost like normal.

This was the problem, actually. Sure, Bobby loved the boys like his own, but they really weren’t his. Hell, they weren’t even the same SPECIES. More importantly, Bobby was a gruff, alcoholic widower with his OWN vendettas to worry about, and he couldn’t see himself raising two sane, functioning members of society. Obviously JOHN couldn’t either, but as far as Bobby was concerned, John Winchester had died with his wife two years prior. So, with a dry eye and a heart he later had to soak in whiskey, Bobby made a few calls and found an older couple with a quiet little farm in Kansas to take the boys in. He comforted himself in knowing they’d grow up safe, cared for, and happy. And they wouldn’t have to sleep in a damn closet anymore either.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Mr. and Mrs. Holman were nice enough people. They were human, and quite religious, and although they were human, they had never been able to have their own children. Now that they were getting on in years, Mr. Holman needed more help around the orchard.

Mrs. Holman liked to get the boys up with the sun to groom their wings (Dean didn’t like that) and she taught them how to read and write (Dean didn’t like that either, but he was really good at it). When they had first arrived, she tried to take the boys into town, to church and the store and such, but other supernaturals, and some humans threw stuff at Sammy, calling him a freak and a monster, and even the human preacher had tossed holy oil at him.

Mr. Holman yelled a lot and threw stuff too, but only at Mrs. Holman, who mostly just cried when he did. Later, he came upstairs and yelled at Sam and Dean too, and told them if they wanted to stay in this nice house and eat nice food, they had to behave like nice boys, and nice boys stayed only in the house or the orchard and read their bibles every night (the Holman’s were an off-shoot religion based on the New Seraphic Testament). Nice boys only slept in normal beds, and washed in the shower, not the lake (there was NO wing room in the tiny human bathroom.)

It was always like that. NICE boys didn’t fly, or teach their little brothers how either. NICE boys didn’t make weapons, or eat entire pies; NICE boys didn’t sneak downstairs at night and watch Mr. Holman’s nudey channels. Dean learned rather quickly that he was NOT a nice boy. He was always getting in trouble, but he didn’t mind it as long as Sammy stayed out the way. If Sammy did something bad, Dean always said it was him that did it and took the punishment. Smart little Sam picked up on that quick, and instead of using it to get away with more, he tried to be extra good so his brother wouldn’t be hurt. They protected each other.

The first time Dean got sick, Sam was five. His brother got hot all over and he said his tummy hurt, and his wings got all wet, but not in a sweaty way. After an agonizingly long night, Mrs. Holman put him in a bathtub of ice water, which seemed to help, because the day after that, Dean was better.

Around the same time the next year, Dean got sick again, and Mr. Holman started talking about abominations and temptation and the Will of God. Mr. Holman started drinking a lot more after Dean got sick the second time.

The night Dean turned eleven, Sam woke up in his nice-boy-bed to a very DEAN smell. It was familiar, but it was also new. It was a good smell, though, it made Sam feel safe and warm inside. But Dean didn’t like it, because he was crying. Sam turned on the light and gasped. “Dean! Did you wet the BED?!”

“Sammy, turn the LIGHT off!”

But Mr. Holman had heard the commotion, and he threw the door open with a bang. Staring wide-eyed at the wet bedding and then at the newly presented Omega’s face, he pointed a shaking finger at Dean and hissed out “Abomination!” Dean stopped crying then, and started to look mad.

He wiped at his face and took a breath “What did you call me?”

Mr. Holman almost interrupted him, quoting the bible in a loud, shaking voice. “And the Lord said onto man, I bring you the shepherds of your flock, and you will know them by their purity of wing, and with them they will bring purity of body. For no creature will walk this earth and be both male and female. Those are Abomination, and only the shepherds will have keeping of them and man shall not. Should man keep Abominations within his house, a curse will be laid upon it, and it is within his right to cull from his own flock that which is undesired by God.”

“You- I am NOT an ABOMINATION! You’re so stupid! Human’s don’t know ANYTHING!” Dean jumped from his bed and tried to plow through the older human blocking the door.

Mr. Holman may not have been in his prime anymore, but he was a farmer, and had worked the land his whole life. Although Dean was an Angel, he was still a child, a fevered, weakened child. The blow Mr. Holman dealt him knocked Dean out cold. Sam started crying.

%

Dean woke up in the garden shed behind the house with is hands tied above his head. It was freezing, his wings were wet and slick was pooling between his legs. The oil at the ends of his feathers had started to freeze, and Dean was shaking violently. His stomach felt like a knife was twisting inside it, and his head was throbbing where Mr. Holman had hit him. He tried to remember what he had learned about Omegas at Bobby’s house, but all he could recall at the moment was that male Omegas only survived their first heat half the time.

Dean was so thirsty, dehydrated to the point he couldn’t even cry. He closed his swollen eyes and let the darkness take him again.

%

When he woke again, someone was cutting him down. They smelled like a Beta Werecat, though Dean couldn’t figure out how he knew that, how he could pick up the nuances of gender designation and species. A blanket wrapped around him was SO WARM, and now all he could smell was musty wool and old fabric dyes. He was put in the back of a van, occupied by another Beta, a Seraph, in the passenger’s seat. Once the Were jumped into the driver’s seat, he heard the Seraph ask “Should we tie him up?”

The Were said “Nah. If he makes it to morning, we’ll go from there.” The van started to move and once again, Dean was out.

Sweet, cool, soothing, delicious water was being poured into his mouth, and nothing on the planet felt better. “Easy Omega, don’t go chokin’ now. Still got a long ride ahead of us.”

Dean was becoming more aware of himself now, and when he’d had enough, he looked up at the Seraph. It was a female, older but not OLD, with shoulder length brown hair and dark eyes that sat a little too close together. She looked a little rough around the edges. He was still in the van, but they had stopped now. The twisting knife in his belly had been replaced by an empty ache in his ass, and his oil glands throbbed with his quickened pulse; he defiantly had a boner now. He unconsciously reached his hand down his crusty pajama pants to stroke himself, and it gave him relief while simultaneously making the need behind him unbearable.

The Seraph watched him for a couple of strokes before chuckling and reaching down to grab his hand and pull it away. She grabbed both his wrists and held them to the floor. “No no no, little one, you gotta stay nice and ready for the boss. Although you DO smell amazing.” She took a deep breath through her nose, closing her eyes. She opened them, looking down at him wistfully. “Its times like these that make me wonder why I love money so much.”

Dean couldn’t even bring himself to care about her words, he’d heard ‘no’, and saw a ‘yes’ on her face. With her hands still wrapped tight around his wrists, he wiggled around so he was on his knees and his face was near her lap. Under the dirty jeans smell he could almost taste her arousal, and he had get some kind of RELIEF. He fanned out his wings in a submissive, pleading way, spreading his legs and raising his hips in the air, slowly rocking them forward and back. He tilted his chin so she could see his eyes, although he didn’t quite meet her’s. His instincts telling him only submission would bring satisfaction.  “Please.” He whimpered.

“Fuck.” She whispered hoarsely. Her cream colored wings began to tremble.

The van doors were thrown open and the Seraph dove out of them like it was on fire. The startled Werecat looked back and forth between the two before she pointed a shaking finger at Dean and said “TIE him UP. Wings too. And for fuck’s sake, Terry GAG him. I’m going to get some god damn suppressant spray.” She stalked away muttering about animals and no Omega being worth her life.

The rest of the day was uneventful and humiliating. Tied wrist to ankle and his wings bound, every flare of heat had Dean rolling back and forth and whimpering. When he discovered he could at least get some friction if he lay on his belly, he groaned into his gag and came on the dirty carpeting. His pants had been pulled almost to his knees by his wiggling.

The Betas stopped for the night they left him in the van and tossed a blanket over him, Keeping him tied up. By morning, his heat was done, and they finally fed him a cold sandwich and a bottle of water, before binding just his wrists and driving again. He had never felt nastier in his life. He could smell himself and there was nothing sexy about it. His hair skin and clothes were sticky with dried sweat and slick and cum, and although he didn’t remember it, he must have pissed himself at some point.

“Please, you guys” he finally said after several more ours on the road “You don’t gotta tell me anything, about where we are, or what you’re going to do to me, I won’t ask, I swear, just please, get me some clean clothes at least.”

The Beta’s looked at each other for a beat before the Werecat shrugged and looked back at the road. “Keep your mouth shut.” Said the Seraph.

Several hours later, the Werecat finally broke the silence “He seriously does reek.”

The Seraph sighed. “I know. Let’s just get out of this town and find a truck stop or something.”

Dean’s heart started to race. A truck stop might mean he could get away… but the Were must have heard the way his heart had accelerated, because he looked at Dean through the rearview mirror and said “Don’t even bother trying something stupid kid, you’ve been bought and paid for, and even if the legality is questionable, you’re about five hundred miles into Allied Territory. Anyone finds you; you’d better hope they drag you back to us. Those Seraphic prisons are no joke and Rainbow City ain’t exactly a cakewalk either. And those are your best case scenarios, OMEGA.”

His heart sank. FIVE HUNDRED MILES? He had to be at least seven hundred from Sammy now. SAMMY! Dean hadn’t forgotten his little brother, but his heat had put his worry for him on a back burner. Now all the concern and fear came rushing back. What would the Holman’s do to him now? Sure Sammy was a good kid and always stayed out of trouble, but those hillbillies in town weren’t exactly open-minded. If things got bad for Sam he wouldn’t have anywhere to go. Dean didn’t think they’d sell Sammy to; Mrs. Holman loved the little squirt more than anything. Still… “Did my little brother get sold to?”

“Not unless he presents Omega.” Terry looked almost sympathetic. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Male Omegas are rare. ‘S why they get such a high price. Wings like yours? You’re gonna make us buku bucks kid. Forget about your baby brother. Couple years from now and you’ll have more babies then you know what to do with.” He said this like he was giving Dean some bad news mixed with great news, like now that he was an Omega there was nothing more he could possibly want besides a screaming, flapping worm gnawing on his tits.

They drove for hours, well past any possible truck stops, and arrived at what looked like a small gas station/motel/general store/restaurant in the middle of fucking nowhere. They had driven down a winding back road surrounded by trees, while the Betas argued about being lost. The Seraph had seemed to think it was a short cut and she crowed in triumph when the little collections of buildings came into view. It was a good thing to Dean thought, because there hadn’t been a single light for some time and when the sun went down the sudden twists and turns in the road had gotten downright terrifying.

The ramshackle main office had a sign above it that said Trading Post, and the price of gas looked to be from last year. An old man was sleeping in a rocking chair on the small porch. The Seraph untied him with a significant ‘don’t even try to run’ look and Dean climbed out of the back and stretched is wings above his head with a loud groan.

“Hey!” said the Were. “Put your wings down Omega. Learn your damn place.”

Dean bit back a retort in favor of not getting tossed back in the van for another night, keeping his head down as he followed a couple of paces behind the man. “Better.” Terry said as they approached the old man. By his thick, bloody scent Dean could tell he was a Vampire. That coupled with the oppressive humidity and greenery told him they must be in the Deep South. Lovely.

He knew he had a bit of a twang to his voice, growing up in Kansas and with Bobby and all, but for the life of him Dean could not understand this old coot. Half of it sounded like another language, and sure enough, the Seraph started throwing in French as she spoke with him.

The Vampire gestured to the door and they filed in, walking between dusty shelves of canned goods and a suspicious-looking dairy section to a counter at the back of the store. The Seraph rang the bell a few times before the smell of sulfur filled Dean’s nose and made him choke a little. He tried to cover it with a cough, but the young Demon didn’t look impressed. “Like you smell so fine, feathers. Smell like a field a flowers had a orgy an’ pissed on each other.”

The Were cleared his throat. “Thanks for that... vivid... imagery. We need a room. With a shower.”

The Demon turned her whole body to face him. She had thin horns that curled around her temples several times and a pattern of iridescent green scales that ran along her dark forehead and the back of her neck. Her low cut top showed the pattern went ALL the way down, and her black eyes flashed as her dark green tail curled up from behind to wrap around the Were’s credit card. The tail ended in a dark green tuft of pin feathers. “Anything for you, kitten.” She purred.

Terry leaned into her space and took a deep breath as the Seraph made a noise of disgust and Dean said “Ugh, I know I stink, but y’all aren’t helpin’ with that litterbox FUNK you got goin’ on.”

From the porch came a loud “NAYDEEN! GIT YO ASS T’WORK!” Naydeen made a face but ran the card and grabbed a key from the wall. “Room four, second on the left.” She winked at the Were and whispered “If you need ANYTHING, I’m in room two”

The old man shrieked from the porch “I KNOW you ain’t give that cat yo’ ROOM numba! Yo’ mam gon’ hear ‘bout this Naydeen!”

“MAM AIN’ CHARGE A ME YA OL’ BASTARD!” She hollered back, before saying quietly “Deflated ol’ knot head.”

“I can HEAR you!” the old man screeched.

They walked into their room and Dean immediately sighed in relief. There was only one bed in the room, but there were two sleeping shelves along the top, and it even had a screened in sky light. The Seraph slammed a plastic bag in his chest as she walked by and said “For fuck’s sake, wash your ass. Now.”

So Dean did. He used the scent blocking soap and scrubbed himself four times before turning to his wings. When he was done, he was grateful for the scent suppressing synthetic oil she had put in the bag for him. His oil glands were still too sore to squeeze for grooming, but his feathers felt achingly dry after the harsh soap. It was a surprisingly considerate gesture.

He pulled on the clothes left for him, figuring they must be from the motel’s lost and found, since they smelled musty and the pants were a little too small, even for him. There was even a slightly too large pair of shoes.

When he came out, the screened in skylight was open, and the two sleeping shelves had been made up. The Seraph was laying on hers and watching him. He cleared his throat. “What happened to Terry?”

The Seraph rolled her eyes. “Room two, sounds like.” Dean then heard a steady thumping noise from down the hall. “Oh.” he said, before glancing up at the skylight again. “You sure you wanna keep that open all night? What if I try to escape?”

She laughed. “We’re in the middle of nowhere kid, the heart of the Southern Forests. This is literally the only outpost for a hundred miles. It’s kept open by the government, it’s so far from civilization. If you don’t get killed by a wild animal, there’s plenty of savage gangs of Alphas out there to do the job. If you can manage the first week, starvation is a pretty common way to go. Its not all apples and berries out there, Snow White.”

Dean swallowed, a plan already half formed in his head. She didn’t know Dean’s first four years of life had been surviving in the woods, and Bobby and John had both taught him more than enough to make it longer than a week.

She mistook his reaction for fear and she lifted up an inviting wing. “Come lay down with me. Your heat can’t be completely over yet, and I know how much an Omega craves touch.” She cooed. Dean DID crave touch, but not that kind. He’d rather be tied up in that van than curled up with this crazy Beta. But the half formed plan became a full one with a click, and something in Dean took over for him.

He raised his wings away from his back slightly, angling them down and toward the woman. His scent changed slightly, though how, he couldn’t say. It was hardly noticeable through the suppressants, but the Beta still picked up on it, parting her lips and twisting her body to face him.

Her nipples darkened through her t-shirt, and she lifted her wing up all the way to reveal plain pink panties. Dean ducked his head and looked up at her through his long lashes as he approached slowly; stopping at the first rung of the ladder when he realized his face was now even with her thighs. He looked at her panties and felt himself grow hard and slick at the wetness growing there. She caught the smell of his slick and started panting. “Yes! Please! Let me feel you, I want to taste how wet you are for me.” She started to rise up but Dean gently pushed her back down, pinching at her nipple and dragging a loud groan from her before sliding his hand back down to her hips. He lifted his wings a little higher, and even to him, the oil his still aching glands were producing smelled like sex incarnate. As he started to kiss her inner thighs, the Beta went wild, pinching her nipples and alternately pulling at her hair and his. Dean kept pressing his mouth to her, not really going too far up or down, glancing at her face. From the way she was moaning it was like he was some full grown Alpha in a rut, eating her out. But Dean just kept running his hands up along her thighs and hips and finally, she came with a gush and a roar to wake the dead, before flopping back on to her pillow, still panting but unconscious.

Dean grimaced a little. Even though he hadn’t done much, he still felt dirty, and he ran to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his hands. His hard on had gone away on its own about halfway through… whatever the hell THAT was.

At tentative knock at the door made him jump, but he went to it without thinking, trying to open it once before realizing the Seraph had locked it while he was in the shower. He opened the door to the chain to see the Werecat standing in the hall. “Whoa,” he said as he caught the scent of the room and the sight of Dean’s hair.

.“What?” Dean said, his voice sounding rough and irritable even to himself.

 “Uh.. I’m just gonna.. spend the night with Naydeen.”

 “Yeah. You do that.” Dean said with a nod.

“You tell Linda I said I hope she knows what the hell she’s doing.”

“Kay.” And Dean shut and locked the door, sighing in relief.

With the moment of panic over, the Omega launched himself into action, dumping out both packs for anything useful. There was cash and a cell phone in one. Dean grabbed the money, but he didn’t have anyone to call and wasn't sure if they could track him with it? A water bottle, a leather jacket that belonged to the Seraph (nice), a hunting knife, a candy bar, some scent blocking spray, (to go with the soap and oil) and a brightly colored purse-bag-thing of the Seraph’s (seriously, who NEEDED that much room in a purse unless you were stealing babies? Which, he thought with a shudder, she probably was.)

Up and through the skylight in total silence (which Dean had been aiming for, but was still surprised to have achieved), he stood on the roof and almost cried at the sight of stars and nothing else above him. “I’m coming Sammy.” He whispered.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's story continued...

Things never really go the way you plan. Dean figured that out the hard way. After about six months of raiding empty summer cabins and camp sites and avoiding anything that looked remotely like people, Dean realized he’d been moving in a big circle. It was impossible to stay hidden and move in a coherent direction. Flying wasn’t really an option, if the stories about Renegades not being allowed to fly were true. 

He was heading in a tentative North-East direction (and debating on the value of heading FURTHER into Allied Territory) when Dean “ran into” a group of unsavory males, trying to hash out some kind of a living as free citizens. Or at least, that’s what they told him (Dean knew people hiding from the law when he saw them). Not one to argue semantics, the Omega simply nodded his head in fervent agreement and wolfed down the jerky one of them offered. The last few weeks had been pretty rough food-wise, and he had realized he’d need a flock if he wanted to survive another winter.

It was a mishmash group of Alphas and dominant Betas of different species. There were three Werewolves; brothers, all Betas; Two Vampires; an Alpha and a Beta, an Alpha Demon (who looked so old Dean wondered how much longer he’d make it out here), and two other Renegades, also an Alpha and a Beta. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to the Omega as he ate, but of course, it’s never that easy.

“You know, nothin’ in this life is free.” one of them said. It was the Alpha Renegade. Dean noted that the one talking was NOT the one who gave him food. He considered this for a moment, trying to size up the situation. 

“You’re right about that.” Dean replied, meeting the other Angel’s eyes and holding them in challenge.

This was an Alpha, but a weak one. Dean’s father had been powerful, (and bat shit crazy by the end). John made sure his boy looked away for no one, sometimes forcefully holding Dean down to make him meet the Alpha’s eyes while he reprimanded him. If Dean could handle THAT at age five, he could own this bitch of an Alpha without breaking a sweat.  
Dean pushed another strip of jerky in his mouth and chewed slowly, unblinking, while the Alpha in front of him started to visibly struggle against the imperative to back down. He blinked rapidly, wings twitching as sweat began to bead along his forehead. Dean could only imagine the kind of internal struggle this poor bastard was going through. He probably submitted to ten people his whole life, and now here was this mouthy little Omega KID, eating his fill without a care in the world. 

The thought made Dean smirk, and the Alpha broke, dropping his gaze to the ground. An audible sigh ran through the group, a sort of nervous tension breaking in to something only slightly less uncomfortable. “Ain’t natural, Omega starin’ down an Alpha like that.” The demoted Alpha pouted. “Ain’t right.”

The rest of the group began to shift around, a few murmured an opinion, but there wasn’t a hostile scent to anyone. This gave Dean enough confidence to say “Yeah, and how many Omegas have YOU met?” A few chuckled.

“It don’t MATTER how many there are, bitch, it only matters that you know your PLACE!”

Without sound Dean leapt to his feet and whipped his hunting knife at the Renegade. He had been aiming for the log between the Alpha’s legs, but the tree next to his head was just as good, especially if it shaved off a few of those ugly ass puke-green feathers (he definitely needed to practice again, though)

Now the tension of the group was obvious. Dean was desperate though. He was going to starve to death out here, or worse, if he couldn’t join up with a flock. He had to prove to the rest of these guys that he had more value than a piece of ass. Plus, FUCK this guy. Dean had hardly any experience with Alphas and he was already fucking tired of them. Those stupid fucking Beta’s that bought him were probably working for some Alpha. Dean wasn’t just some HOLE to fill, he was a gods be damned WINCHESTER, and he still had a little brother to get back to.

All his anger boiled up at once, and Dean strode to the Alpha with his wings as high and wide as the forest allowed. His scent twisted on its own into something that probably would’ve frightened HIM if Dean had smelled it out of context. Instead it just made him more confidant as he walked up to the Alpha and looked up into his face. He flinched when Dean raised his hand to pull the blade out, and Dean kept his eyes on the Alpha while he worked it out of the wood.

He walked back to his spot with his head down, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes and possibly set them off. The Demon started to chuckle, then laugh. Soon he was wheezing with mirth. The Beta Renegade with the jerky asked curiously “What’s so funny, Roy?” 

Between gasps and knee slaps, Roy pointed at the Alpha Angel and said “Chet! He PEED hisself!” Even Dean joined in on the laughter then.

When things settled a little bit, the group started to make camp. No one ordered it; they just seemed to come to the same conclusion and got to work. Dean stood up to follow after one of the Wolves “Here, let me help.”

But the Alpha Vamp stopped him with an arm out, before folding it back across his chest. “Now, just a minute there, cher.” Dean looked up and visibly swallowed. He may be able to look any Alpha in the eye, but that didn’t make him unafraid, and this Vampire was HUGE. He had large hands, a broad chest, and a short beard he probably kept neat just by INTIMIDATING it. Underneath the rusty scent of Vampire was the scent of Alpha. Not just regular Alpha, though, this Vamp was a TRUE Alpha, like Dean’s father had been; someone whose power went far beyond the ability to pop a knot or use a Voice. Dean didn’t even know there was a difference until he caught a real whiff of the Alpha in front of him.

The Alpha picked up on Dean’s fear, and he instinctively tried to placate the Omega with a soft voice. “Hey now cher, easy, easy. I’m not gonna hur’cha.” He was at loss with this Omega; for one thing, he was a HE, and an Angel (hardly out of his damn diapers) and now he just looked pissed (which was better than terrified, but not by much).

“You sound like you’re trying to soothe a horse.” Dean snapped, crossing his own arms and flaring his feathers irritably. 

Roy walked by with a stack of wood and wheezed again in laughter before it devolved into a coughing fit. He called over his shoulder in that same not-really-English language that the old Vamp at the motel had been speaking.

Whatever he said made the Alpha look down and rub the side of his neck. Dean didn’t think a Vampire could blush, but that was pretty damn close. The thought of whatever Roy said to make an Alpha look bashful made Dean’s face flush with color, and now he was mad all over again, this time at himself.

This stupid Alpha made Dean just WANT to follow him around. Dean didn’t even get WHY. Sure the Vampire was good looking, and he didn’t smell half bad under the rusty-blood smell, but that wasn’t enough to cause such a heavy PULL. Like this person was a planet and he was getting caught in orbit.

Dean realized he was staring. And crap cuz now he didn’t want to look away and be mistaken for submissive. He narrowed his eyes a little. “How OLD are you?” 

The Alpha raised his eyebrows at the random question, but Dean tilted his chin defiantly and barreled on “It’s just, aren’t you a little YOUNG to be leading a flock… or pack… or whatever?” 

He scratched at his chin before replying with “Ain’t YOU a lil young for runnin’ round the woods alone? Come to think of it; how old are YOU?” Now Dean did look away.

“Thirteen.” He mumbled. 

“Thirteen, huh? Well, I’m twenty five.”

“I’m young, not blind. How old are you for real?”

“Weh-hell, if the pot ain’t callin’ out th’kettle.”

Dean sighed. “Okay I’m turning thirteen next month.”

The Alpha chuckled. “Do you even know what month you’re IN? I’m twenty.”

He gave up. “I’m eleven.” Dean said sadly, “At least, I’m pretty sure I’m still eleven. What month IS it, anyway?”

The Vampire tried to keep the sympathy from showing on his face, but imagining this little Omega wandering the forest, lost, alone, hungry; it was amazing he hadn’t been caught and claimed by someone. He’d always been told Omega Angels were like glass and paper; this one seemed more like steel. “June.” He replied. “And I’m sixteen. What makes you think I’m the leader?”

Dean tilted his head as he considered the question. He didn’t want to admit something like, ‘it just FEELS right’ so instead he said   
“Well, no one’s yelled at you to do anything and the camp is pretty much set up now.”

The Alpha looked around and laughed. “Not bad, brotha, we’ll make a honest thief of ya yet.”

“Dean Winchester.”

“Benny Laffite.”

As they shook hand-to-elbow, Dean felt a little jolt run up his arm. “Huh.” said Benny in mild surprise, while Dean rubbed his arm after the Alpha released it.

When everyone sat around the fire to eat, Dean sat next to Benny without a thought, and Benny scooted to make room for him without looking up from his food. Dean sat straight up with one wing arched behind Benny, watching the tree tops, and Benny crouched low underneath it, elbows on his knees; keeping his eyes to the underbrush. Despite the relaxed position, they both looked oddly alert, ultra focused on their surroundings as they ate without speaking.  
Watching the two move in subconscious tandem was… “Weird.” said Tyson; one of the Weres. “Yeah.” said his brothers, Tre and Todd. The three of them kept their focus on the strange pair. It was oddly hypnotic for the Betas. All of the Betas, actually, seemed transfixed by the Vampire and Angel eating across the fire.

Demons were solitary creatures, so when Chet made a joke about getting a chance at the Omega when Benny’s knot went down and all three Werewolves turned at once to growl at him, it was Roy who talked everyone down and explained the behavior.

“All a ya’ll is PACK animals at heart; an’ Betas, to boot.” He gestured between the Weres. “You three’s the most needy when it comes to havin’ that space filled and you two” He pointed at Gerald, the other Vampire, and Mark, a russet winged Renegade. “You’re getting’ all that too, in your own way. True Alpha an Omega, getting’ together like that? They can’t deny it any more’n you can. Each one’ ya is dominant in your own right, an’ you already fallin’ in line under ‘em” He turned to Chet and whapped him with his hat “And it ain’t all about claims and knots, ya ungentlemanly SHIT.” Roy pointed at the pair in question, who had both frozen in place when the Werewolves had started growling, and had heard every word. “That there’s the stuff a legends, boys. When a Alpha an’ Omega that both got that, that kinda POWER, or whatever you wanna call it; when they team up, EMPIRES fall. Ya’ll jus sit back and enjoy the ride boys, fire’s finally starting to catch.”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Perhaps Roy had been a little over the top in his prediction, they weren’t exactly Antony and Cleopatra, (if you asked them they were barely Abbot and Costello) but Benny and Dean together somehow managed to turn a half assed assortment of wanted men (who had gathered only until something better came along) into a well-organized flock.

It only felt strange when they went around other people. Then they were reminded that they were, in fact, a nameless collection of supernaturals (one of whom was pushing into the one-twenties in age), led by an unmated, underage, Vampire/Renegade, Alpha/Omega PARTNERSHIP. Usually other people were afraid to mention it, although seeing a Wolf that came to five feet at the shoulder roll over in submission to a twink of an Omega ANGEL was always worth a gawk or two. Gods help Tre if he ever forgot Dean’s suppressants again. Not being able to find them was one thing, forgetting was another.

The personal relationship between Dean and Benny was sort of different for an Alpha/Omega pair, Dean thought. For one, despite having had a full heat, Dean wasn’t that interested in sex yet. He was still at the holding hands stage of life when he and Benny met. Benny always suspected the Omega had suffered a bad experience; aside from the being bought and sold part, which always made the Vampire’s blood boil when he thought about it. They slept side by side every night, Benny on top of Dean’s wing, and Dean’s head underneath Benny’s chin. If one of them reached for the other’s hand during the night, neither of them mentioned it, but it never went past that.

Benny also had his own reasons for not going further; an Omega in the Caribbean that he had hopes of claiming. A Vampire named Andrea, with a father that would stake Benny on sight unless he could prove he’d paid off all his fines. They all had stories like that, and it was all for small crimes like vandalism, or righteous crimes like punching the Seraph that raped your sister, but the fines were astronomical, and you could either pay them off in a prison camp, or have a proxy pay them for you. The results were a lot of semi decent supernaturals turning into outlaws with nothing left to lose. The members of their little tribe didn’t seem concerned with their Alpha’s sleeping arrangements, though, and they protected Dean like he was carrying the Christ child, and not just some orphaned Renegade. 

They mostly stayed in the woods, sometimes stealing, sometimes doing more “honest” work, like pretending Dean was psychic and could read your future, for a price humans were always willing to pay without question. Once they saw the virginal male Omega Renegade, surrounded by three massive Wolves and two other Angels, humans all but fell over each other to have their fortunes told. Fairs and circuses usually only charged them to set up shop by helping set up and take down tents, and although their lives weren’t glamorous, or even comfortable, they worked well together, and made good money, too.

Men living off the land and running from the law left something to be desired on the personal hygiene front, although everyone at least made a semblance of an effort to keep the smell down, if only because no fair would hire a troop that could be scented from a mile off.

The first time Dean’s wings got REALLY bad, (as in, even the Demon with cataracts thought they were starting to look a little ragged in the back) he had made it through nine months of awkward reaches and frustrating soaks when they camped near water, before admitting defeat and asking for help. They had spent a mild winter in an abandoned hunting cabin; just four walls, a dirt floor and a surprisingly sturdy roof. 

Although Dean would have preferred sleeping on the roof, and Benny would have preferred the small root cellar, they compromised with outside and on the ground whenever possible. Chet and Mark stuck to the roof, and the Werewolves were more than content practically lying on top of one another and sleeping all day by the fire; where Roy spent almost all of his time hunched over. 

To say the winter had been long would be an understatement, and they all piled back out at the first hint of spring.  
The easy winter had the added benefit of more frequent meals, and Dean was proud to note he was starting to finally fill out a little more, he could’ve at least passed for sixteen to a human. But while the height had been a plus, the more frequent grooming demands had been a negative, for more than just Dean.

“Dean, man, you know I got nothin’ but love fo’ ya, ya KNOW I do” Gerald said one morning. “But if I find another one of your greasy, dirty, musty feathers in my mouth again, I’m gonna HAVE to shove it up your ass.”

“Dude, my feathers are fuckin SHOW STOPPERS, not-“ Dean stopped as Gerald held up a crumpled blue feather; the down was stuck together in clumps. “Uh… that’s not mine?”

“Dean, even in WINTER you washed yourself a few times a week at LEAST. What’s with you, man? How come you’re not grooming your wings proper?”

Dean looked away from the Beta Vampire. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Okay,” Gerald said patiently “So how about I ask Mark or Chet and they could maybe-“

“NO! No. Not, not another Angel, it… it’s my oil glands man.” Now Dean’s ears were red. Gerald could tell this was obviously Very Personal Angel Business, but he had no idea what Dean was talking about.

“Oookayy.” He said slowly “So, what about your… oil thingys?” Dean looked around to see if anyone was listening, but Chet, Mark and Benny had left on some sort of scouting mission to see if the rivers were thawed, and everyone else was out and about or still sleeping. “Not so loud man, its embarrassing. My…my oil GLANDS- dude, they’re… really sensitive. Like, I don’t want to touch ‘em, or, you know, USE ‘em, or whatever.”

“Oh.” Said Gerald

“Yeah. Oh.”

“So just get Todd, Tyson, and Tre to make a fun-run for some wing oil.”

“Oh.” Said Dean.

“Yeah. Oh.”

Dean grinned and shook his head at himself before he stood and hollered out a loud “GUYS! FALL IN!” at the top of his lungs.  
A loud thundering came from the stream as three soaking wet, gigantic Wolves came tearing up the path. They looked like they were racing, and one of them (Todd) got tangled in his own feet and took out Tre on his way down. Tyson lumbered up with a tongue lolling grin, to triumphantly slobber on Dean from face to the top of his head, where he started to lick furiously.  
“DUDE! STOP! Stop LICKING me, you nasty bastard! You DIDN’T WIN! They FELL! Damnit- TY STOP!”

The Wolf sat back and whined a little as his brothers approached behind him. Dean eyed them all like a perturbed mother hen before saying “I’m not talkin’ to you guys while you’re dressed like pound puppies, go shift. NOT HERE TRE!”  
But it was too late, and everyone got an eyeful before Tre sheepishly walked into the cabin to grab clothes for him and his brothers.

“I swear to the gods I have seen more dick in the last year than porn star.” Dean said as he pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing when he heard Roy holler “DAMN IT TRE!” from inside the cabin. The old Demon had taken to sitting next to the fireplace all the time now, even though the weather was climbing into the seventies during the day.

The Weres were more than happy to have an excuse to get out of the camp for the day, and if they took longer than necessary, Dean didn’t complain. He would’ve loved to get away, farther than just circling the tree tops, but when Gerald found a poorly sketched picture of Dean on the bounty board at a fair they’d been working last fall, they packed up and headed deep into the woods to settle in for the winter. Escaped slaves brought in a pretty high price if they were turned in alive. Dean’s bounty was three times higher than anyone else’s, for some reason. Benny figured it was because there ARE no Renegade Omegas anymore, let alone MALES. Plus, Dean’s wings were pretty unique, and probably added to the price.

The literal BUCKET of suppressant wing oil the Weres brought back had Dean in tears with laughter. “This is enough to last a LIFETIME guys, where the hell did you even- never mind. Every time I ask something like that, I end up regretting it. Thanks.”

Dean filled an empty liquor bottle with oil and walked down to the stream alone. Once he got going, it was heaven. He didn’t realize how bad his feathers had gotten until the dust and grime started running off them in rivers, leaving them glossy and smooth, the many hues starting to come through in the sunlight. But now Dean was stuck with an unreachable clump behind his back, and he could already feel the various spots he’d missed.

Gerald gave a good natured wolf-whistle at Dean’s approach. “Now, THEM are SHOW stoppers.” He flopped down on the fallen tree next to the Vampire with a heavy sigh. “Awe, what’s wrong now? You want a different perfume for ‘em?”

Dean scowled. “Fuck you man. I just spent like, four hours on them and they still look like shit.”

“Look fine to me. Smell better, too.”

“Yeah but I can’t get the back and I know I missed some spots and” Dean flushed and muttered “Benny’ll be back soon. Realizing how that sounded, he quickly back peddled “I’m not like, trying to IMPRESS him or anything. It’s just that, he’s had to deal with my nasty wings all winter and he didn’t even say anything.”

Gerald gave an understanding nod. “Well, here, I’ll help.”

Dean’s wings flared before folding tight to his back .“You can’t! I mean, only other Angels, but, not like Chet or Mark, but like family and stuff can do it and…” He trailed off.

“Dean, I know what you’re thinkin’ and all, but for one, I’m in my thirties and I have a WIFE- don’t look so surprised man, I had a life before all this- and for two, I’m not into Angels. Or dudes….or kids.”

Now the Angel felt humiliated. Leave it to him to just assume something like that, but Gerald cut his thought off. “That don’t mean you should go around trustin’ anyone. It’s a ugly world out there kid. We all wanna keep you safe.”

Dean just muttered “Not a kid.” as he turned his back. “And, just… don’t… gods this sucks.”

Gerald chuckled. “You be aight.”

The first oiled touch to the downy spots on his back caused a series of reactions: Dean, to his utter humiliation, moaned like a sick cow; Gerald pulled his hands back with a “Woah!”; and Benny, who had just arrived, shouted “What the fuck is goin’ on?” as he grabbed his friend by the back of his shirt and tossed him on the ground.

“He was just HELPING me!” Dean yelled. This was getting ridiculous. Instead of no one having to know, everyone was going to know about Dean’s stupid… problem.

“Yeah” said Benny, eerily calm “smells real helpful up in here.”

And now Dean was ready to curl up and disappear. “It didn’t make THAT kind of…reaction.” He said to the ground. “ ‘S not like I can control what my scent does.”

Benny wanted to stay mad, but he couldn’t deny that there was nothing untoward about Gerald’s scent- more confusion and mild disgust than anything else, and Dean’s misery was rolling off in waves through the fresh oil on his wings. Which looked stunning, all freshly groomed like that. Mark cleared his throat and Benny turned to the Angels behind him. The Beta was pointedly looking away from the scene, but Chet was openly staring at Dean. Benny looked the other Alpha in the eye. “You need something Chet?” 

Chet finally looked away. “Nope.”

“Good. Go unpack or some shit. Dean, walk with me brotha.”  
They headed down to the stream, Dean two paces behind until Benny stopped to walk alongside him. “You DO know what that looked like, right?”

“I do NOW.” said Dean miserably.

“Look, I’m not your Mate.” They both winced a little at the term, but Benny continued “but I want- I NEED- you to come to me with this stuff cher. Not because I wanna make you OBEY me, or whatever, but because THIS?” He gestured between them. “This THING we got? It’s important. We got this bond goin that I don’t really get any better’n you do, but the guys need it to be strong, too, and havin’ someone else touch you like that. It feels.. I dunno.” Benny closed his eyes. “Man I can’t explain it, and now I just sound like a jealous knothead.”

“No, Benny, I get it. I do, I just didn’t think… things keep changing in me and I know I haven’t had another heat yet and maybe that’s why, but… I didn’t think something weird would happen if I didn’t… like, touch my oil glands.” Talking to Benny was always easy, and now Dean wanted to kick himself for not saying anything before.

“ ‘S wrong with your oil glands?”

“I don’t know I just, they’re SO SENSITIVE, and like, touching them is...”

“Painful?” Benny asked.

Dean laughed at the insanity of the situation now, and Benny grinned a little, despite his confusion. “It’s not painful, it’s the other thing!” Dean rubbed at his face with both hands at the confession.

“The other… oh. OH.” Dean blushed and smirked, meeting Benny’s eyes as the Alpha figured it out.

“Alright cher, sit on down and get comfy.”

“But I-“

Benny ignored him, running back to the log and grabbing the wing oil. When he returned, Dean was still standing, his arms folded.

Benny sighed and rolled his eyes. He held up three fingers and said “I solemnly swear to never speak of the events that are about to occur. Happy now, brotha?”

Dean smiled and threw his arms up in mock defeat. “Fine.” He said as he sat on the ground, Benny settling in behind him. Dean heard the oil splash in the bottle and took a deep drag of Benny’s scent. He closed his eyes. “There you go cher. I got ya now.” Benny’s Voice rolled over him in like a pool of warm water, and Dean absently thought that they’d both needed something like this for a while now.

That thought, and all others for that matter, fled his mind as soon as the Alpha’s cool hands touched him. As thick fingers began to work into the down on his back, Dean arched into the sensation, stretching out his primaries in relief. 

“Oh GODS, Benny, you don’t know how GOOD this feels.”  
Benny chuckled. “Don’t go makin weird now, cher.” 

Dean snorted derisively. “You’re an Alpha Vampire, grooming the wings of a Male Omega Renegade, with oil brought by three loyal as fuck Beta Werewolves, in the middle of nowhere-“

“Got it. Nothin weird goin on here.”

They continued in silence for a few minutes, punctuated by Dean’s directions. They were just about done when Dean suddenly shouted.

“Oh, oh Benny YES! Right there! Please! Don’t stop!”

Benny’s hands jerked back as if on fire “I wasn’t even touchin’ you that time!”The Omega laughed. “Yeah but I can scent Chet around here somewhere; probably hoping for a show.” 

The Alpha jerked his head up toward the trees, trying to catch the Renegade’s scent over the suppressing oil. “That creepy fucker.” he muttered as he turned back to Dean. “I don’t know why we keep him around anymore.”

The Angel sighed; standing up to stretch and letting his wings out as far as possible, preening a little despite himself as he noted the many facets of new color since he came of age. Benny swallowed at the sudden dryness in his throat. “Damn brother, them feathers a yours could make you very rich indeed.”

Dean rolled his eyes and laced his voice with sarcasm. “Hey, I’m Dean, an OMEGA escaped SLAVE! Oh, and my last name’s Winchester; as in John Winchester, the legendary leader of The Hunters? Anyway, look at my very distinct wings, strangers and gimme some cash!” Benny wisely said nothing, waiting for his co-captain to settle himself down.

“Anyway,” Dean continued, starting to walk back to camp “We keep Chet around because he’s good at stealing shit and he can carry a lot. And he saved Gerald’s life once, according to you.”

“Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”

“Are you WHINING at me, man?”

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

By the time summer was in full swing, life at the camp was getting tense. The heat was unbearable for everyone but Roy, who continued to sit by a roaring fire, even in mid-day. Dean took to bringing the Demon food so he wouldn’t have to leave the warmth for too long, but he didn’t like to linger. It had to be close to 120 degrees in there, and still the old Alpha stayed wrapped up in a pile of blankets.

“Pretty common way for an older Demon like that t’go, actually.” Gerald told them one day, when the issue of continuing to gather more and more wood from the area came up. “They get chilled and just sorta stay that way, till they just up an die or set the place on fire, tryin t’get warm. ‘S why they like to live in stone houses.”

“So- what?” asked Dean “We just let him sit in there alone until he eventually torches the place?”

“Well, yeah, ‘s what he wants, anyway.”

“So we’re just gonna hang out and keep bustin’ our asses choppin’ down half the forest, and not getting’ anywhere with our bounties?” said Tre.

“I’m not stickin’ around just so some senile BONE-head can die the way he wants.” said Chet. A few of the group winced.  
Benny pointed at the Angel “Watch yo’ mouth with the slurs, Chet. Roy’s done a lot for us in the past.”

Tyson, in Wolf form, whined a little. “Yeah,” said Todd in apparent agreement, “Why CAN’T we just leave him here?”

“We’re not just gonna LEAVE him here!” Dean said vehemently.

“We COULD,” Gerald pointed out, “but once that fire’s out, what you think’ll happen to ‘im then?” Todd looked away. “I can tell you right now he don’t have the strength to gather his own fuel, and a Demon that old dies without a fire by ‘im; dies in a lotta pain.”

“While I don’t agree with how he said it” Mark weighed in “I can’t say I disagree with Chet; or Tre. I got a fledgling in Rainbow City. I don’t even know if he’s still ALIVE. I’m seven hundred away from bein’ able to walk through those gates and findin’ out. I could’a done that this summer, if we hadn’t been waitin’ around here for half of it. Now I gotta bust my ass, and hope to get it all paid before winter hits again.”

“You wouldn’t even BE that close if it hadn’t been for ME!” Dean yelled. Mark didn’t even bother trying to challenge the Omega, Dean’s scent was getting sharp with anger, and he wasn’t wrong.

“Well, be that as it may,” Chet enunciated slowly, as if speaking to a child. Dean’s scapulars flared. “We ain’t family; debt’ll only get someone so far around here. I got a fine to pay off, and as LUCRATIVE as this merry band of gentlemen has been, it’s time for movin on.”

“Me too.” Said Mark, with more respect and regret in his voice than Chet “Dean; Benny. I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t have to.” Benny nodded and grabbed his forearm in respect. “Good luck brotha.”

Mark pulled the Alpha in and whispered low, “Don’t forget what brought you out here, there’s no shame in gettin back to your own Omega.”

In the end Chet, Mark, and Gerald packed up and left. Leaving Dean, Benny, and the three Weres to care for the Demon, who seemed even smaller in his mound of blankets to Dean the next time he went to check on him.

Two days after the Angels and Gerald left, Dean walked down to the stream in the early morning hours. He had slept poorly that night, unable to get comfortable in the heat next to Benny, and unable to get comfortable on the roof without Benny’s protective scent surrounding him. His stomach was starting to cramp up a little too, and by the way his oil glands throbbed, it probably wasn’t from the squirrel they ate last night. Which meant he’d have to get someone to make a run for suppressants, TODAY. Sometimes Dean really hated being an Omega. 

He could smell them way before he saw them. Someone was trying to sneak up on the camp, and judging by the lack of howls, the Weres were still sleeping, or worse. Not for the first time, the Angel cursed every branch and bush that made the trail to the campsite so confining. If he could’ve flown, he would’ve been there in a third of the time it took to run. 

By the time he was within shouting range, Dean couldn’t scent the intruders anymore. It was smothered under the smoke-and-flesh of Roy’s cabin. He knew the damp, moldy wood of the shack wouldn’t have caught that fast on it’s own, and now he was really starting to panic. He felt blind by the overwhelming array of scents in the air. He had no idea where Benny or the others were, and now the wind had changed to push smoke in his direction.

A few yips came from off to his right, but they sounded far away and getting further. Dean took a breath and started coughing, while instinctively beating his wings to take to the air. He hadn’t even cleared the collapsing roof of the cabin when a sharp twinge at his hip threw him off-kilter. He never even saw the first dart before the second hit his neck from the other side and consciousness left him.

%

The shriek of metal on metal brought Dean back to a harsh reality. He was being carried over the shoulder of a foul-smelling Demon.

Dean started kicking and punching at the Demon’s back, beating his wings furiously. The Demon ignored him, simply adjusting his hold like he spent all day carrying struggling Angels down corridors. He stopped his steady lumbering and Dean stopped punching. The Demon flipped him over and let him fall to a cement floor. 

The Angel cried out in pain, figuring he must have a few broken ribs from the way it hurt. Another metallic sound and Dean realized he was being locked in a cell. He rolled to his knees and shouted “Let me out!” as loud as his sore chest would allow. He grabbed at his side and sat back, knowing how futile it was to scream, especially as the Demon was walking away.  
When the choking smell of sulfur faded, a worse one replaced it, and Dean looked around in mounting horror. The place reeked of slick and blood and fear, and worse-death- all covered by a cloud of Omega in heat. The bright lights of the cell block left nothing to the imagination, and he realized that all of its occupants were Seraphs, and Omega females. 

None of them seemed concerned by the new arrival, most just continued to sit or lay in the same spot, some staring at nothing, some crying. They all looked starved. He really hoped the one on the end was just sleeping. It was hard to figure anything out when everything around him smelled like a nightmare. The blond in the cell next to him was so thin and pregnant it looked like even her body fluid had been sucked into her torso. She at least smelled alert, and not like heat.

“Where am I?” Dean asked her. She stared at him as though he hadn’t said anything. “Can you talk?” He tried again. “What is this place?” A door opened from the other end of the hall now, and all the Seraphs (except for the “sleeping” one) scooted as far back as they could.

“Oh fuck.” Dean murmured, watching the women move, “There is nothing good about that kind of reaction.”  
He moved away from his cell door as well, before chastising himself for being a pussy and going back, craning his neck to see as much as possible. A male Seraph was opening the cell at the end, and Dean couldn’t even pretend the Angel was sleeping as she was dragged by. She looked like maybe she had starved to death, but the blood on her thighs and the wide-eyed expression on her face suggested otherwise. He couldn’t help it; Dean stumbled to a corner of his own cell and coughed up bile as another woman started screaming. Presumably at the sight of someone familiar getting pulled past them like a dead animal. 

Hot tears ran down his cheeks unexpectedly as he sat back against the wall. Dean had no doubt he was going to die in this place. He heaved a steadying sigh and turned back to the blond. “Hey.” He said softly. She whipped her head around like he had yelled at her “Ya coulda just said Hell.”

A few more hours and Dean’s fear was being replaced by more immediate needs, like hunger and thirst; he’d already figured out what the grate at the back of his cell that ran along the entire wall was for, so at least he didn’t have to piss. The screaming had finally stopped. When the door opened again, even though he scooted back with everyone else, he was secretly hopeful it was someone with food and water. 

Judging by the smell, it wasn’t. Instead, it was the Demon again and a different Seraph. Their arrival caused some of the Omegas to start crying harder, while one openly screamed “Oh God please, not me! Just kill me, please!” The Seraph was an Alpha, and he used his Voice to holler “Shut the FUCK up!” The sudden silence of the cell block left Dean’s ears ringing.

He started to shake helplessly when they stopped at his cell, unlocking it without looking at him. The Seraph had a small black case in one hand, and he casually set it on the shelf of the cell door and unzipped it. He pulled out a sickeningly long needle and a small vile of yellow liquid, and Dean made a move to get away. Which was probably why the Demon came along, he thought, as he was grabbed by the back of the neck and pulled to the floor. The Demon sat on his lower back and Dean thought he was going to pass out from the pain in his ribs. 

The Seraph said something and the Demon responded with “How the hell should I know? All you smell like wet feathers to me.”

The Seraph came closer now, struggling to fill the syringe. “This shit gets stickier with every batch.” He complained. “He smells like oral suppressants. If I’m not wrong- and I’m not” He finished filling the syringe and glanced down at the Omega “he’s been taking WEREWOLF suppressants.”

“So?”

“So,” the Seraph turned to his companion with the needle pointing up “if this kills him, is Michael gonna kill us?”

The Demon sighed in irritation. “Well, do the orders say anything about NOT shooting him up under certain circumstances?” 

A large set of hands started working at his pants and Dean started to struggle. But they only went as far down as the curve of his left cheek, where a sting bloomed into a burn under his skin. As the two stood up and walked out, Dean’s vision began to blur. His veins where being replaced by sulfuric acid; hot lava. There was nothing inside him now but pain and a need for the pain to stop. When his throat started to burn, Dean realized he was screaming.

The first thing (aside from the pain) Dean felt upon waking was a familiar ache between his hips. He was in heat. But it was all wrong. The empty space felt hot and dry, but his pants were wet. His slick was sticky and smelled like blood, and he was shivering with cold.

Dean knew that time was passing (it had to be), but how much was well beyond him. Blurry figures towered over him, and their voices stabbed through his aching head. 

“I told you we’d kill him.”

“He’s not dead yet and Michael’s on his way. We just have to keep him alive until he gets here.”

“What’s the ETA?”

A long pause.

“Five days.”

“FUCK.”

%

Dean was at the orchard, it was the dead of winter and he couldn’t find Sammy. The sun reflecting off the snow was blinding. He tried to call out, but his tongue felt heavy and dry. There was a stinging sensation on his arm, and he looked down at a fat little bee. It was stinging him slowly, poking at him and pulling out, only to aim for another spot. He thought they could only do that once. “Quit.” He tried to say. “You’ll die.” But the bee was buzzing by his ear now, and an unexpected stab to his neck made him yell. This time it wasn’t going away; it felt like it was crawling into him.

%

It was still winter, but now it was dark. The snow reflected starlight like trillions of blue diamonds. He took a step and instantly regretted it. It was so COLD. But the cold didn’t start in his feet like it was supposed to, it was in his chest. He started to shiver, looking around for a jacket or something to warm up with, when he noticed a set of familiar wings under one of the night-blackened trees. “Mom?” Mary turned to look over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were in shadow, but her smile was serene. He felt too weak to move as she slid away. Dean started to shiver more as the cold continued to spread.  
“Mama, my chest huhts.”  
%

“He’s going into shock.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!? Get the dopamine!”

“No Omega is worth this shit.”  
%

A tired sounding beep woke him this time. It sounded like a battery needed to be replaced or something. He opened his eyes to a light above him and a pulling sensation on his neck. The beeping got faster. “Calm down and hold still!” More burning from inside his neck as a tube was pulled out; everything hurt.

Despite his better judgment, Dean tried to talk. “Th’fuck happen’?” his voice sounded like someone took and egg beater to the inside of his throat.

“Shut up.”

For once, Dean did.

He woke up again inside a different cell, the blond Omega from before was across from him now. He didn’t want to think about who he was replacing; most of the cells were empty now.

A week after bringing in the first Renegade Omega found in the wild in decades, three Werewolves and a True Alpha Vampire tore off the door of his cell and carried him out, leaving the one’s responsible for running the facility in as many pieces as time would allow. 

They had been tipped off about Dean’s whereabouts by Gerald, who had explained about Chet’s untimely death when he tried to collect the bounty on Dean. They opened the other cells to, but none of the other Omegas were willing to follow, and the four of them didn’t have time for a pep-rally.

Michael arrived several hours later, and with the three who had been running the breeding center already dead, he had nothing to break his rage upon other than the handful of ragged Omegas left behind. Most of them were lucky enough to have a quick death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had to break my original chapter up into three parts, because it was CA-RAYZAY long, so Dean's back story isn't over yet. As far as when the next posting goes; i don't fricken know, man. I wish i could be more consistent with this but it's been slow going. No way am i giving up on it though. All mistakes are totally mine, because time was limited and Blitzdrake TRIED to save me from myself. He is truly a hero among betas, even if all he could do was drag this horse to the water...


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's backstory concluded...

It was a few months later, when an Omega living in the Capital Towers was given the activation codes for a few random tracking chips, that Dean noticed a small shocking sensation on his hip.

Michael’s men found the Omega in a small cave. He didn’t acknowledge his captors; he just kept mindlessly smashing the now pulverized chip with a heavy rock. Despite the blood on his hands and hip, for some reason, all the Seraphs could scent in the cave that night were tears.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Charlie listened to Dean’s story with rapt attention. She’d laughed at the antics of Roy and the Weres, but by the time Dean had finished his story she felt sick.

"This is all my fault."

"What?" Dean laughed in shock at the unexpected and outrageous claim.

"I was the one who activated the tracking chips last week! ME! I’m so sorry Dean I-"

"Woah! Chill! Its okay sis, it ain’t even close to your fault! So you followed a command and got to live another day; there’s no guilt in that." He sighed heavily. "At least here I get a chance to take a swing at Michael. And trust me, I’d much rather be dead then ever see the inside of one of those breeding centers again."

Charlie shuddered. "I just really wish I didn’t have a front row seat to the end of the world."

"Charlie!" Dean startled her with his outburst and sudden change of mood and scent. "You have the chance to SAVE the fucking world! THINK about it: you just told me you have access to almost EVERYTHING, Raphael just thinks your skills are some amusing Omega hat-trick. Fucking prove her WRONG! You said this was our mid-life crisis? So do you really wanna enter your golden years knowing all you have to show for it is being the submissive little Omega she thinks you are?"

"No! It’s just-," she paused, biting her lip in thought "if I did something to stop it, it would have to be big, and fast. Then I’d have to somehow escape, or just jump out a window and hope it kills me; because Raphael WILL make me undo any damage."

"How is jumping out a window gonna KILL you?"

Charlie raised her eyebrows and cocked her head at Dean like HE was the crazy one. "Uhh, I can’t FLY? Duh."

"D-"he looked around like someone would appear and start explaining things for him. "Duh? DUH, Charlie? You’re an ANGEL! How is that in anyway a DUH?"

"Well," Charlie said calmly "I’m from RAINBOW CITY? Why do you think Renegades STAY there? Flying is illegal to everyone but Seraphs."

"Holy shit, I thought that was just a myth. You seriously CAN’T fly? Not WON’T, CAN’T?" Charlie nodded. "MAN," Dean mused "What happens to your wings if you don’t USE ‘em?"

Charlie grimaced. "Nothing pretty; let’s just say it’s for the best most don’t live to be old."

Dean made a noise of mild disgust before moving on. "Okay, so no flying. That’s not… great; but it ain’t a game ender. Can you get out of the city, if you got out of the building?"

Charlie thought about this for a moment. "Probably." She said slowly "I know every inch of this city, but only in theory. I mean, I’ve had the municipal maps memorized for years, but I haven’t left the Towers in at least the last two of them." She sighed "Getting out of the city isn’t the hard part, though. I mean, not really. It’s everything OUTSIDE of the city that’s the problem."

"How is that a problem? There’s nothing wrong with outside the city."

"Are you KIDDING me!?"

Dean leaned away at her vehemence. "Outside of the cities is DANGEROUS. I mean, come ON dude, you JUST told me a horrifying life story about getting almost MURDERED, more than ONCE. And before you try to point out how that DIDN’T happen, you’ve lived your whole life out there; I’ve lived mine inside a fence."

Dean closed his mouth; his retort taken from him before he could give it. They sat in silence for a few moments.

"Of course," Charlie said with a mischievous grin and change of scent "I wouldn’t have to worry about all that with a world-wise, strong, Alpha-dominating Renegade to guide me safely from my captors and through the dark forest…"

"You read a lot of fantasy fiction, don’t you?"

"Shut the frack up and help me with a terrible plan that will get us both tortured to death."

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Charlie’s heat was barely over when a redshirt (as Dean called them, she almost kicked herself for not coming up with the euphemism herself) came to get her. The plan was indeed pretty terrible, and she really hated that most of it had been her idea.

She kept her scent as neutral as possible when she inquired about Raphael, but she wanted to cheer when she was told the General wouldn’t be returning until the next week.

"Michael is here, Omega, you’re not without an Alpha." The Beta had said indulgently.

Charlie immediately headed to the large shower adjacent to her bedroom. She felt like she was saying goodbye to an old friend as she rinsed her wings and scrubbed her body with scent blocking soap. There was almost no price that could be put upon a wing-accommodating shower (almost.)

She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for the next year, but instead she dug through her closet for anything remotely practical for the outdoors. Everything Raphael wanted her to wear was either flimsy formalwear or business suits, or thin pajama sets that she’d probably freeze to death in. Finally she settled on some wool slacks, a long sleeve blouse without much fringe, and a pair of fashionable boots that went halfway up her calf and were likely to fall apart the first time they got wet.

She shook with nerves as she started up her beloved computer, but her hands steadied as they flew across the familiar keyboard. Soon her experience took over, and it was just another hack. Charlie lost herself in the task. Once the final loading screen popped up, though, she was jerked back to reality. There was no way to know if she was successful unless she stayed there to watch the results (not part of the plan.)

Charlie concentrated more willpower than ever on hiding herself and masking her sent. A floating feeling took over. It felt a lot like the day her mother died, but with more control. Something powerful within her had been woken, but by Charlie herself, not circumstances. Now, rather than clinging to the power and hoping it pulled her in the right direction, she was holding the reins.

She slipped from her room and directly past the line of sight of a security guard at the end of the corridor, opening the door to the service stairs and stopping on the other side to gather her bearings, before dashing down flight after flight. It was well after business hours in the building, and the various scents of employees and residents were stale on the empty stairwell.

Almost to the floor of the loading dock, Charlie was panting now, and she almost didn’t catch the sharp stench of Alpha before the door a flight below her was opened. She threw herself into a corner on the landing and thought of nothing but not being caught.

It was Michael, oddly alone, and Charlie could smell everything about him from her position. In her mind, she could see the suit he was wearing by scenting the fibers and dye of the cotton. His jacket was off, his tie undone. The overripe scent of rage and lust overpowered the alcohol he’d practically soaked himself in. Raphael would disapprove, Charlie thought absently.

He fumbled with the doorknob and she found herself almost directly behind the Alpha now as they slipped into the loading dock together.

Her heart raced, every instinct demanding that she RUN from this crazed Alpha scent, and she felt as though she was dragging herself forward. The first sign of Dean was his fear, before the scent shorted out, morphing into something bizarrely like lust, but not Dean’s. It was a lot more like Michael’s current disgusting odor, and as the Seraph caught the scent he stumbled. Charlie fought not to gag at the Alpha’s mounting desire.

"Your heat is started by my presence-" Michael slurred. The only heat scent Charlie could find was her own fading one from hours earlier, so his words didn’t really make much sense.

Michael leaned forward to open the cage, and like a flash of lightning, the smell of blood filled the air.

"Dean!" Charlie screamed, but the sound was eclipsed by Michael’s wails. He clutched his face as blood ran from his fingers. He crumpled to the floor and rolled back and forth like a man on fire, curling around himself childishly.

Confused, Charlie looked from Michael to Dean, before falling to her knees. The weird Michael-but-not smell that had been rolling off the Omega before, was now a horrifying blend that reminded her of giant spiders, her dead mother’s face, the yawning darkness of an old person’s hut, and every other countless nightmare she didn’t know could HAVE a scent until now.

"Charlie! C’mon Char, PLEASE get UP!"

The nightmare was pulling on her arm now, and she tried to pull back before a rush of lavender and fear made her look up. It was Dean- and he was terrified. Michael’s screams had stopped.

Charlie jumped to her feet, grabbed Dean’s bloody hand, and pulled him with her as she lead them through the small office that opened to the street.

They paused outside for a brief moment, Charlie to determine their next direction, and Dean to look up at the brightly lit skyscrapers in awe.

"Holy sh-"

"DEAN! This way!" She tugged at him again and he tore his gaze away as she led them through a maze of garbage strewn alleyways and seedy streets. Maybe all the supposed beauty of the cities was at the top, Dean thought to himself as he slid a little in something mushy. He kept his mouth shut though, in favor of saving his energy and trying to concentrate on the path of twists and turns Charlie navigated them through.

Eventually, they came to a high chain link fence, and Charlie didn’t hesitate as she started to scale it. Along side of her, Dean scrambled past like a monkey, flipping over the side and climbing down so they were face to face.

"So, you come here often?" he said with laughter in his voice.

Charlie kept doggedly climbing, muttering incoherently but otherwise ignoring him.

"Hey," Dean continued "when you get to the top, just spread your wings and glide down. The ground is clear on this side."

Charlie said nothing, just grunted as she pulled herself to the top. But she’d heard him, apparently, because instead of climbing over the side, she balanced between the links steadily and pushed off.

The rush of wind under her wings made her almost shout for joy. She pulled them down on instinct and started to flap. She was actually FLYING! In a wobbly, uneven, almost-smacked-into-that-building kind of way. She slid her boots on the gravel of another roof, pleased with herself for landing on her feet.

Dean landed behind her silently.

"Is this…"

"Yup. Welcome, Wild One, to Rainbow City. I’d give you the tour but, you know, this is it."

Dean was caught once again in awe, but of a different kind. They stood on top of a crumbling two story brick building, tucked into the corner of a massive expanse of huts surrounded by the fence they’d climbed. The only other actual building was on the opposite side, where bright spotlights shown down on a large, crowded gate. The only other discernible light source came from the orange street lights placed around the fence, making the center a dangerously dark place. All around the enclosure were skyscrapers, the shortest about ten stories at least. It made him wonder if the sun ever even shined on the imprisoned Renegades. There were no trees, or any visible greenery; just miles of small, low to the ground shacks, crammed together so close, the "streets" were more like narrow trenches. The reek that rose from it was one Dean knew he’d never be able to forget.

He felt tears well up but refused to let them fall as he met Charlie’s unreadable expression before following her as she glided to the ground.

"I’m sorry Dean," Charlie said with sincerity. "I wouldn’t have made you come here if it wasn’t the fastest way through the city."

He was about to respond when a terrible screeching sound filled the air. Dean covered his ears and ducked from the danger. As it faded, he heard Charlie’s quiet chuckle. "It’s just the midnight lunch whistle, Dean." He stood up and glared at her. "I have no idea why anyone would eat lunch at midnight or hear that shit and think FOOD!"

She giggled again and darted away with Dean quickly following, both of them ducking around the building as an armed Seraph strode by. He didn’t have any sort of uniform on, and Dean wondered if he was even an authority at all. They started walking toward the endless line of huts. Charlie navigated the camp just as easily as she did the city, following the shadows and darting around people and debris expertly. "No one should recognize me on this side of town, but just in case, we’re going to have to head for the edges of The Hole."

"The WHAT?"

"That dark part in the middle? I know you saw it."

"The HOLE? Little melodramatic, don’t you think?"

Charlie stopped to stare him down. The Angels around them ignored the two, even when Charlie leaned in to whisper. "CAN you control your scent? Because if you’re holding out on me, now would be the time to mention something."

"I CAN’T Charlie, I already TOLD you-"

"Okay" she interrupted "stay here." And she darted of into the maze of huts. Dean stood there awkwardly for a moment or two before realizing that nobody seemed to care one way or another about the strange teen standing in the middle of the road. A girl that looked younger than him sat in a doorway and nursed a skinny toddler whose wings didn’t seem to be laying right; while another middle aged woman squatted on a stool and stared at him in an unfocused, euphoric sort of way. He pulled his wings in a slightly when he realized she was tripping out on the color of his feathers. She didn’t seem to notice the movement, though.

He was focused on the older woman’s obvious drugged-out state when an overpowering perfume filled his nose. A hand stroked him lightly between his wings and he turned to face a boy a few years older than him. He was a Beta, with dirty brown hair and large eyes. He wasn’t exactly ugly, Dean thought, but his scent was pretty bad. He was wearing eye liner and not much else; the smell of synthetic slick rolled nauseatingly from his hands. "You wanna spend some time with this pretty little Omega bitch for a while, big guy?" Dean gaped at him for a moment before switching on his most charming grin and leaning into the other boy’s space. "Actually, I was wondering if you could help me find-"

"DEAN!"

"Her. Thanks sugar." Dean finished with a wink, turning to Charlie and grabbing her arm as he marched away from the hooker. "Don’t you fucking leave me here Charlie I swear to FUCK-"

"Relax; I would never leave you here Dean. Besides, you looked pretty content talking to that trick. You better be careful dude, you’re gonna end up with wing-rot or something, if you keep crawling all over everyone like a horny hamster."

"Can’t slut shame a virgin, Charlie."

"Yeah well, how about the crippling terror of-"she wiggled her fingers and said in a dramatic voice "SIMPLEX UROPYGIAL!"

"SICK dude! I’m not swappin wing oil with hookers! A guy can’t even talk to someone without getting accused of-"

"Here, put this on, sweet feathers." She tossed a large blanket over his wings and head that smelled like a rotting corpse. "Oh my-"Dean couldn’t finish his sentence, loudly losing what he had in his stomach. "You bitch about me talkin’ to hookers and you cover me in- I’m gonna get fuckin gland herpes from THIS!" he whined from near the ground.

"It’s an old man’s blanket and I got it for YOU. This way, you won’t smell like an OMEGA as you stroll into one of the worst neighborhoods in the WORLD, and get KNOTTED to death by a bunch of drug addicted PSYCHO-alphas."

"I took care of Michael just fine."

"The type of Alpha that ends up in the center of Rainbow City would make Michael look like Mr. Rodgers- and how DID you ‘take care of’ Michael anyway?"

Dean grinned and slapped an object in her hand "I think you forgot something the other day." It was her comb, covered in blood; the ends sharpened to a knife-like edge.

The blanket really did smell unholy, but it also did the trick. As they skirted the edge of the darkest part of the camp, most gave them a wide berth just from the smell. That and the scarf Charlie had wrapped around her face made people think Dean was carrying something contagious. Nothing was as universally frightening as the threat of disease when one lived in close quarters.

They managed to get through the gates with the same idea; the guards all but shoving them through when Charlie explained that her "grandpa" had a fever and was leaking sores all over his face. The other side of the city was mostly factories and abandoned buildings, punctuated by vast empty lots. They walked until the sky began to lighten, hiding from the occasional passer by. If Michael was looking for them, he was doing it discreetly.

When Dean asked about the ease at getting out, Charlie smiled sarcastically and said "Don’t you know? The fence isn’t there to TRAP us; it’s there to PROTECT us. God’s forbid, the Seraphs would never MAKE us do anything."

As another fence came into view they moved away from the main road. This gate was kept by one fat human watching TV in a tiny office, and Dean gratefully tossed aside the foul blanket and leapt into the sky to scale the fence, Charlie clumsily following after.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *tosses chapter and runs into the void*   
> I'll do better next time, I swear!

Dean, for his part, didn’t roll his eyes- or ask Charlie why she was looking at him like someone died. He returned her gaze with a steady, unreadable stare of his own. He rose to his feet and scooped up the canteens, walking toward the nearby stream without a word.

"Hey, Dean" Sam called out "don’t go off alone!" He sighed when the Omega kept walking, hollering another "hey!" as he jogged to catch up.

Kevin started digging through his pack, muttering something about coffee while Charlie started sorting through Dean’s pack, assuming his was probably in the most disarray (after Kevin’s). She grinned when she found a pair of fatigues (the Ewok jammie pants were cute, but impractical), but the more she pulled out, the deeper her worry lines grew. His own med kit matched hers, a standard, less complex version of the one Sam had. She laid out everything from her bag as well; pleased to see she’d packed an extra blow dart gun and quills. Still, things had been forgotten, and she began rolling her lips between her teeth as she came to her conclusion.

The brothers came back in the middle of a heated argument. Something about Sam wanting to carry some of Dean and Charlie’s supplies because, ‘he could handle it.’ Charlie struggled to keep her eyes from rolling as they approached.

"Here Char." Sam said, handing over her two canteens and continuing his argument "Listen, Dean, we have- a LONG- trip ahead of us, and I just think we’d cover more ground if-"

"Are you fucking serious right now? I fucking carried YOUR gigantor-ass ten goddamn miles last year when you thought you broke your foot-"

"It HURT-"

"You lost a SHOE-"

"GUYS!" Kevin and Charlie shouted together.

The shout had the desiered effect; in that the bickering turned quiet as Dean tried to make his little brother eat his share of dried fruit for breakfast. Angels didn’t need to eat as much as other species, but tucking in while they had the opportunity was a Winchester survival trait that hadn’t failed them yet.

"Gods, those two are ridiculous." Charlie said to Kevin as the brothers started to bicker about the next-nearest water source.

"Yeah, no kidding. It’s not like it matters where we go from here, anyway."

"Whacha mean Kev?" Charlie asked around a mouthful of almonds.

"Dude, we all forgot about Ash." He sighed and shook his head at her blank stare. "If we can’t get our asses to some real technology in the next-" He squinted at the sun for a moment "54 hours, the whole system, databases, encrypted messenger systems, communication relays, everything is going to wipe itself out. People are gonna be PISSED, and I for one, am not looking forward to explaining to my mom why she can’t communicate with any of her other clinics anymore."

Charlie knew she had stopped chewing, and that she should probably shut her mouth before her food fell out, but she couldn’t manage the simple motion at the moment. Her eyes locked on to Kevin.

Dean stopped needling his brother as soon as he picked up Charlie’s change in scent. It had gone from her usual oranges-and-licorice-mix, to a bloom of noxious panic.

"Whoa! What the hell just happened?" Fortunately, Dean’s abrupt attention was enough to snap the other Omega out of her apparent shock, and she launched forward, grabbing Kevin’s shoulders with both hands and hollering in his face.

"What the actual FRICK is WRONG with you? How did you not SEE that as CRITICAL, IMPORTANT, INFORMATION!?" She punctuated each emphasis with a furious shake, harder each time, until the Beta’s head began to flop back and forth at the last three words.

"Charlie, relax!" Sam yelled, grabbing the back of her arm and gently trying to pull her back. She released her hold and glared at Kevin before looking away and apologizing.

"It’s cool; I totally wanted my spine re-aligned so, you know, thanks for that." Kevin bit out as he rubbed his neck. His tone was harsh, but his wings were curved toward her in concern.

"What the hell just happened?" Dean repeated, turning to face Kevin directly this time.

Kevin ignored Dean in favor of Charlie, who was obviously still stressed, but otherwise calm. "I figured you all knew-" he told her. "I mean, Ash explained the whole system to everyone right before he left-"

"Well I FORGOT, OKAY? There was a lot of beer involved and not everyone has a photographic memory, KEVIN!"

"Guys" Sam said in his best peace-keeping voice "What’s going on? What did Ash tell us?"

Kevin huffed and ran his hands through his hair, stopping halfway to grip it in frustration. "The TFW program isn’t just so Dean can look up Busty Beta Beauties and buy Star Wars memorabilia from dubious sources." Charlie’s feathers fluffed a little and she cleared her throat uncomfortably. The tree line was suddenly fascinating. Dean folded his arms and cocked his head, eyeing her significantly as Kevin continued.

"All of the information on our histories, our birth and death records, our safe house locations, which flock is going where and when and why; it’s all part of Ash’s program. Charlie, YOU helped design it-"

"I organized it into a coherent system; I didn’t have anything to do with his crazy ass self-destruct fetish!" She flinched a little at her own choice of words; Ash had seemingly disappeared on a mission several months earlier, and while the task he’d sent himself on had appeared fairly easy, Sam and Dean both managed to blame themselves for whatever had befallen their friend.

"Wait a minute, self-destruct fetish- GUYS, what’s going on?" Sam said.

"Look" Said Kevin "Every base of operations in the Resistance uses the same programing to report and store information. Charlie and Ash, maybe one or two others, on the PLANET-" Charlie interrupted with a quiet "Yeah they WISH."

Kevin rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored her as he continued. "Could break through the firewall and access it. The only ones with full access other than us are Pam and Jessie. Oh, and a Demon named Ruby."

Dean asked "A Demon? Really?"

"If we put all our trust into just Renegades, we’re no better than the Seraph, and we’ll lose this thing. One of our worst mistakes was believing Renegades could handle everything by ourselves. Other Supernaturals have had it rough under Seraphic occupation too, you know, Demons especially." Kevin’s breathless tone suggested he’d been waiting to give this speech for a long time. Dean kept his arms folded and his face blank, but the dark purple-black feathers at the tops of his wings were flared in mild surprise. His scent was buttery and amused.

"The point IS," Charlie said "of the four of us, only Kevin remembers that stupid, unnecessarily complex series of passwords Ash installed. He SHOULD have mentioned that before we left, but it doesn’t matter now. When the destruct sequence was started at the Bunker, everything everywhere shut down; no one can get in, nothing can get out. But that’s not the important part; what IS important is that without those passwords entered BEFORE Dean booted up the self-destruct program, the whole system is going to start deleting itself completely, UNLESS someone can enter them in time."

"Okaaay", Sam said with the air of someone trying to understand. "So why can’t any of these other people enter them from wherever they are? By the way Kevin, you and I are going to have a very serious discussion on tactical information and relevance in the near future."

"The self-destruct sequence was started AT the Bunker; that means only the Bunker’s specific passwords are going to work" Charlie replied "and only Kevin and Ash know them perfectly. It’s set up like a last resort, end of the line kinda thing. The Bunker was SUPPOSED to be impenetrable. If it fell into enemy hands, Ash figured that by then, it would be time to wipe it all out. I think that’s why he didn’t bother making SURE we all knew it; he figured we’d either have enough time to enter the codes, or we’d all be dead."

"Which does beg the question-" Kevin pointed out "how did they even find us? I mean, they must have known the location of at least half the sensors, to sneak up on us with a group that size."

"Another time, Kev." Said Sam "Right now, we need to figure out a plan. I know Pamela; she stopped by Bobby’s a couple times. Dean, I know you remember her". He widened his eyes a little at his brother’s lack of reaction. "Remember? Black and silver wings, said she was psychic…" he tried again. Dean remained quiet. "DUDE," Sam tried again. "she was an ALPHA. Please tell me you didn’t hit your head when you landed the other night."

"No, I remember her Sammy. What’s your point?"

Sam said nothing, just openly stared at his brother.

"What?" Dean stared back.

"Nothing! It’s nothing. It’s just… a little strange you’re not bouncing up and down like a puppy at the thought of seeing Pam again, is all. I mean, you had the biggest crush on her, and she always said if she didn’t have a mate-"

"Your POINT, Sammy?"

Sam looked hard at his brother, trying to figure out the change in him. Aside from the slightly stressed way his feathers were laying (something they all had going for them at the moment) the lines leading from nose to lips seemed deeper, and the furrow between his brows had become a fixture on his face since they’d left the Bunker. For someone as carefree as Dean, there had to be a serious problem to illicit that sort of long-term response.

Sam subtly scented the air around the Omega, trying to pinpoint the source. Beneath the fading suppressants was the home-and-comfort smell of family. Dean’s smooth tobacco-like cover had an air of familiar I-don’t-wanna-talk-about-it irritation, and the deeper, headier pine had a worried edge to it. The Alpha openly scented his brother now, unconsciously lifting his wings and curling them around Dean. The familiar lavender-like scent that mixed with everything else to make his brother distinctly OMEGA had changed, into something brighter. It was still somehow DEAN, yet different. Sam stepped closer and placed his hand on Dean’s arm, squeezing slightly and looking into his eyes. He hadn’t really focused on his brother since he’d been pushed from the control room, and suddenly all those gut-wrenching stories about what happens to Omegas left on their own. He feels sick at the thought.

"Dean. What happened in the control room, after I left?"

Dean’s lips parted, about to let down the walls to his little brother, but thought better of it. No need to make Sam worry about shit no one can control. He threw his hand off and stepped back. "After tea we all sat in a circle and made an afghan! What the fuck do you THINK happened? A bunch of Seraphs got blown up along with possibly ancient texts and artifacts we’ll never get back!"

"Dean just TALK to me!"

"NO Sam. I’m FINE. We got bigger problems right now than how you’re FEELING; like getting Kevin to a fucking computer!"

Sam narrowed his eyes but dropped the subject, "We probably couldn’t make it to Pam’s in time anyway, even if we flew. She’s too far north."

"You aren’t getting anywhere in time UNLESS you fly." Said Dean.

"What do you mean, me?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"I’m not leaving Charlie, Kevin is too loud and slow to come with us, and he can’t make it to the coast alone. You have take him over a direct line, you have to go over the desert, and you have to go SOON."

"I’m not LEAVING you, Dean."

"I’m not giving you a CHOICE, Sammy."

Charlie let them glare at each other for a moment before turning to Kevin and asking loudly "So, do you think you can find your way home from here?"

Kevin scoffed. "Of course I can. I could get us to Ruby’s in forty eight hours if the weather stays good. We hit a dust storm though and we’re screwed."

Charlie grimaced at the thought, but said encouragingly "Sam’s got the mad Alpha skills, he can get you through anything."

"Yeah, just as long as he doesn’t lose a shoe." Dean added helpfully.

"You are never gonna let me live that down, are you?"

"It’s cool Cinderella, I’m sure someday your prince will come."

"The fact that you just direct-quoted a Disney movie speaks volumes on how you spend your free time."

"What are you talking about, free time? I don’t get free time, I clean up after you all day."

"ME? I’m the cleanest one!"

"Oh really? So its Kevin’s long hair and red feathers I’m picking out of the drain every-"

"Guys!" Charlie interrupted. "We SO don’t have TIME for this. Sam and Kevin, you need to go through your stuff and leave everything but the essentials; Dean, if you’re hoofin’ with me, you must have a destination in mind?"

"Yeah." said Dean confidently. "Sam gave me the idea. We’ll go see Pam and Jess."

Charlie raised her eyebrows "You sure you can find it from here?"

"Hell no." Dean scoffed "But I can find it from New Hope, and New Hope is only about fifty miles north from here."

"As in the New Hope where-"Charlie began cryptically.

"Yep." Dean replied.

Charlie sighed heavily. "That’s an all-human settlement, do we know anyone there?"

"A woman named Missouri, not my biggest fan, but she’ll take us in for a day or two if need be."

"Okay" Charlie said then looked down at the ground for a moment before nodding and repeating her "okay" to herself. Her scent had turned sad.

"Hey, we don’t have to-"

"I’m not letting sentiment get in the way of survival, Dean!"

"Okay Loki, sorry I asked." Dean said defensively.

"What’s going on now?" Kevin asked.

"I’m going to pee." Charlie said, before stomping off with a muttering litany.

Kevin didn’t miss what she was saying, though. He turned to Dean. "Who’s Dorothy? Why is she so pissed?"

Dean waited until she was out of earshot before turning to Kevin. "If I tell you, you will never bring this subject up again." The Omega’s scent had become frazzled, wavering between still irritated and sort-of happy. Kevin had detected a wider range of emotional scent from the Omega in the last two days then he had in the last few years. The lack of suppressants was probably just starting to show, but the Beta still wondered if either Dean or himself were losing their sanity. They probably both were.

If Dean noticed Kevin’s hesitation (and he must have at least been able to scent it), he ignored it, launching into a story even Sam stepped closer to hear.

"When Charlie and I got out of the capital- no Sam, another time- we found a camp of Humans that wanted to leave the territory, too. There were these two girls, sisters, Lisa and Dorothy. Lisa and I had a thing for a little while, and Dorothy and Charlie, too. I wasn’t sticking around, though, because I was still on my way to Sam, but Charlie and Dorothy were like two peas in pod- what, Kev?"

"But you’re Omegas?"

Sam sighed, "Here we go."

Dean glared at Kevin. "Do you think that just because we’re Omegas we can’t choose to be with whoever we want? Are we supposed to just waste our lives crapping out babies and looking for the biggest KNOT we can find?"

"Dean" Sam interrupted "Charlie’s gonna be back soon."

"She’s down by the water Sam; I can smell her from here. Anyway, bottom line, they were gonna head to New Hope, and I left Charlie there. I broke Lisa’s heart when I left; and Dorothy broke Charlie’s when she waited until I left to tell Charlie she wasn’t that in to Angels and she couldn’t be with someone who was friends with the guy that dumped her sister, anyway. Long story short: Lisa and a few others made it to New Hope, Dorothy didn’t."

"Why didn’t-"

"Dunno." Dean said, although the look on his face suggested something different. Kevin let it go; remembering the story Sam once told him; about what Dean had done to the humans who sold him. The Omega had a history of putting family first.

Humans; Kevin mused as he began refilling his pack with only bare essentials, never seem to fully understand Angels until their skin was in shreds. Angels were merciless and brutal by default; they found a mission and followed it through to the death. Humans may have quaint notions of oaths and vengeance, but compared to an Angel, that’s all they were; quaint. Kevin didn’t even feel bad for that couple. They never should have taken in young Angels if they planned to treat them like pets.

Charlie returned in silence, starling everyone but Dean when she plopped down in the haphazard circle.

"Dean, may I have a word with you, please?"

Sam and Kevin exchanged a look. "We'll just... be over... there." Sam said feebly, grabbing Kevin by the shoulder and lifting him bodily away. When the two were well enough away, Charlie narrowed her eyes at Dean.

"We don't have any suppressants, and you're about a day away from a triggered heat."

"WHAT?" Dean said in shock. Out of everything he expected the other Omega to want to talk about, this was the last.

"Just- we do not have time for this, you're on the edge of what smells like a brutal heat, and we have no suppressants. Now, I know you don't want Sam to know, and as far as I can tell he doesn't, so tell me; was it a Seraph?"

Dean looked down and nodded before meeting her eyes. She sighed heavily at the pain in his.

"Yeah, I" Dean began, stopping at the hitch in his voice. He cleared his throat. "He was an Alpha, with, um, black wings. But, they were glittery, and he had on a uniform. I dunno. He was defiantly a Seraph, anyway."

"Is he..."

Dean glared at her. "I don't know Charlie, I didn't stick around to see if any of the limbs falling around me belonged to my-" He paused, unable to say the word. "Yes. He's dead." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Got Michael, though."

Charlie gasped. "MICHAEL? Like, MICHAEL, Michael? He was THERE?"

Now Dean's grin was undeniable. "THE shit-eating-psycho-Alpha himself. Toasted with his buddies like a sparkly marshmallow."

"Yick." Charlie's bemused disgust faded to concern "Raphael wasn't..."

"No." Dean said softly "No sign of her."

Charlie tucked her hands in her underarms and blew a long huff. "What're we gonna do, Dee?"

"I dunno kiddo. Try to get you as close to Pam's as I can before... you know"

"I'm not going to leave you out there to DIE. You're my big brother. I owe you everything."

"Hey, who said anything about DYING?"

"Dean, this with be your first actual heat in over a year, and it's not going to be a normal one. Whatever that even MEANS for you."

"That’s not important. What IS important is getting you-"

"I HATE it when you DO this shit, DEAN!" She shouted. He shushed her and leaned in closer after glancing toward the rest of their flock. "You always act like you don’t matter, like all you’re good for is keeping everyone else safe and like you’re just- I don’t know- WAITING for the chance to sacrifice yourself for us. You are IMPORTANT, Dean. YOU. I –"

"Alright, okay, I get it. Don’t be a martyr or whatever. But Charlie, we both know how this story ends. The way I see it I can take it easy and buy myself more time, and for what? Or, I can push through the pain and see you guys safe."

Charlie said nothing, just wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest, scenting as best she could at the awkward angle and swallowing her tears before Sam and Kevin noticed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I like to think of a good alpha like my opinion of a good dom, only mixed in with a lot of instinct and lack of control. So that's what I'm trying to convey with Sam, here. A dom's desire to feel in control and needed, along with a sense of wanting to please while, again, being the one to control the situation, is amplified by an alpha's need to be a care taker... hope this chapter makes sense...

Sam stood on the ledge of a jagged outcropping of rock, watching as the sun bled away into a desert night and listening to Kevin’s rhythmic breathing behind him. He hadn’t bothered with trying to sleep; the Alpha in him was far too restless. Leaving Dean and Charlie the day before had been difficult, to say the least, and poor Kevin had been subject to the brunt of Sam’s over-attention and general fussing.

Sam had to struggle between keeping a decent back draft for the smaller Angel to fly in, and making sure Kevin was still behind him. The result had been a bad neck ache for Sam and an exasperated headache for Kevin, who had asked to stop for the day in part just to get Sam to relax. They had flown for almost 24 hours.

Kevin was exhausted, but had only managed to doze a little bit; it was hard, with the pull of home getting so strong. Sam said he could see the hazy green-grey outline of the northwestern range now, and they could be in the city of Gill’s Bay by the next night if the weather held. Kevin opened his eyes to Sam’s tense wings blocking the view, and couldn’t help the groan he let out as he tried to stretch out his aching wings in the small cave.

Sam faced him and had almost finished the "Are you okay?" that had become his mantra over the last day before Kevin cut him off.

"I’m FINE!" he all but shouted, feeling guilty as soon as the words were out and he took in the Alpha’s stricken face. "Sorry." Kevin muttered before searching for something to soothe the other Angel’s stress. "UM, a little thirsty?" he knew Sam couldn’t help it, not really, and the Alpha looked grateful for something to do as he handed Kevin a canteen.

"Hungry?" he asked, clearly still feeling the Alpha imperative to care for his flock. The whole situation had sent Sam into a bit of a spiral; losing the two Omegas, regardless of how temporary, left him reeling.

Kevin made a face at the thought of the M.R.E.s they’d carried with them. "No. Let’s just go." He tied the canteen to his waist with a pointed look at Sam, who had opened his mouth to argue about Kevin carrying too much, before snapping it shut and turning toward the sky. _Good._ Kevin thought. _He’s_ _already getting better._

Letting his wings stretch out as Sam began to make lazy circles above him and rise higher, Kevin sighed. He wanted to feel excited about finally going home, expected to be terrified of what might happen if they didn’t make it on time, but mostly, he was just ready for Sam to snap out of his Big-Alpha-Freak-Out. It was going to be another long night for the both of them.

 

　

　

　%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

　

　

Dean hadn’t bothered to watch his brother and Kevin fly out of sight; as soon as they had cleared the tree line, he was grabbing the fatigues Charlie had given him and gearing up for a long walk. Charlie kept her mouth shut, packing up her own things and hiding the wince of pain when she pulled her injured wing a little too hard.

She’d managed to keep her thoughts to herself for all of ten minutes after they left Stull. Charlie spoke Dean almost as well Sam, and she knew from experience that there was only so much one could do if he was trying to keep things to himself. Still, the tense silence was _killing_ her.

"Dean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay."

Grunt.

"I mean, if you’re intimidated by the Alpha that is Seven of Nine, I understand."

Grunt.

"It’s just- like, how hot would it be for Seven and B’elanna to tie that knot? I bet if B’elanna went into heat, Seven would be ALL over that."

Dean sighed dramatically and stopped, so really it was _his_ fault Charlie bumped into him and tottered backward. Luckily, her good wing helped her balance long enough for Dean to grab her elbow, and she didn’t end up with her butt in the dirt. Her broken wing had tried to follow suit with the other, though, and the unexpected stretch made her grit her teeth and swear.

‘Fuck- me-damnit, Dean! I’m taking lead!" despite her angry words, Dean’s lips twitched, and he gave an exaggerated sweep of his arms and wings to allow her to pass. They marched in silence for another minute before Dean muttered, "B’elanna Torres is not an Omega."

Charlie grinned in triumph. "You don’t know that, not for sure. I mean, yeah she’s all tough and stuff but do you see the way she tilts her head all submissive-like when Tom kisses her?"

"That dude’s _definitely_ an Omega."

"You’re talkin’ crazy Winchester! I like it."

%%%

As the day wore on, the friendly banter began to fade. They had been walking steadily out of the thick trees, and the ground was giving way to moss and large stone. Around the same time Charlie realized they were now walking along some long-forgotten path, she caught the scent of Dean’s heat beginning.

It was still soft and warm, a halfhearted twinge of horny-Dean with a little spark of chagrin weaving through it all, but there was an ominous metallic undertone Charlie couldn’t quite catch yet. A few more minutes of walking and she felt the sympathy pains starting to cramp around her middle.

"Well," Dean said a little breathlessly, "is it my heat starting, do I have to poop, is it a tumor? All this and more, next time on What the Actual Fuck is Happening Down There?"

Charlie chuckled a little helplessly. "I’ll give you three guesses, how about?" Before Dean could respond, the smell of hot slick wrapped around them and Charlie caught a flash of terror from Dean before he seemed to stomp it all down, the scent of his oil fading away. There wasn’t much he seemed able to do about the smell of Omega in heat, however, and Charlie bit her cheek as another wave of dull aching rolled through her.

"Maybe we should-"

"Not gonna happen." Dean said. "We need to keep moving, maybe find shelter or- hey" he interrupted his own train of thought, "does it seem like we’re going downhill?"

Charlie hummed in agreement and they continued to follow what was becoming a not-so-long-forgotten path, though who or what traveled it they couldn’t tell. The sunshine from earlier in the day had turned to grey, and it was starting to look and smell like rain. She was about to mention how the trail looked less like a natural gully and more like someone had carved it from the hillside when she noticed a thin mist floating down from the ground above.

Dean said "I don’t think I like this trench." as Charlie continued to watch the fog roll in. "Should we turn back?" she asked, knowing what Dean’s answer would be.

"Nah. Let’s walk a little further, see if it goes back up. ‘Sides we already came this far."

"How far do you think we are from the town?" When Dean didn’t answer right away, she turned to face him fully. He was staring off into space, his face was pale and his cheeks were flushed. Little beads of sweat were starting to form across his forehead. She allowed herself a tiny sigh, not wanting Dean to notice her worry.

The sound snapped him out of it and he hoisted his pack a little higher on his hips. "Let’s keep going," was all he said in response.

%%%

The swirling mist grew heavier, until the Angels couldn’t see even the sides of the path, or more than a half a foot ahead. Sound and even scent were muffled, but the ground did indeed give the sensation of a steady incline, and they took comfort in the sensation of moving to higher ground.

As Dean’s heat continued to progress, Charlie found herself clinging to the scent, using it as her guide to his location behind her. The cramping had leveled off into a dull ache and she hadn’t started producing any extra slick yet. Dean; however, was not doing as well, and she could occasionally hear a gasp or groan following the smell of fresh slick.

Dean must be miserable back there, she thought to herself. She thought about stopping again to check on him, but a vague sense of urgency was creeping in. There wasn’t any discernable reason for it (other than the obvious things like fleeing from bad guys and such), it was more a feeling of don’t stop, keep going. There were little alarm bells going off in the back of her mind about this, she knew Dean needed her help, but she was so tired. And right there, just ahead where the fog had cleared, was a little patch of soft looking moss she could curl up on. Dean was fine. The smell of his heat was starting to fade now anyway. He’d be alright. He was right behind her. He’d want a nap, too.

"Dee." She murmured into the soft earth "Sing soft kitty to me?"

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wow so idk if this is like, cruel and unusual punishment or a breath of fresh air but I'm warning you people right now it is SHORT. And unbeta'd. And i'm really sorry it's taking so long... and it's going to probably make more questions?   
> Oh! and tell me what you want more of first! because if i start doing a whole bunch of little messy chapters, you guys can kinda let me know who you want to hear about next, and i'll try to make it work!

Everything was burning. His skin, his abdomen, Dean’s bones were on fire. Every panting breath he drew was needles in his throat, and all he could smell was his own sickness and too-dry slick. He was going to die, out here in the mist. Charlie’s scent had been drowned out by his own ages ago, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes on the grey, anamorphous blob that was his nest-mate.

Soon, he forgot who it was he was following, or why. _Just one more breath, one more step_ , he thought to himself _. But why_? Said another voice inside. _Without Mate, why walk_? At the sudden reminder of the hole in his chest, Dean dropped to his knees. There was no Mate. He would have screamed, if there were anything left in him to do so.

Miles away, past the wall of mist and deep into the forest, a wolf began a long and desperate call.

 

%%%%%%%%%%%

Dean was dreaming; not a good dream, but not really a nightmare either. Just a dream. He could hear the calls and cries of his old pack. Ty was howling. It sounded super urgent, but then again, Ty thought a two-day-old deer carcass was something everyone had to hear about RIGHT NOW, so Dean ignored it, and allowed himself to drift further. He wished the pain and thirst would leave. Dreams were meant to be a BREAK from reality. When the breathless voices and howls started mixing in, Dean wanted to yell out "its just carrion, guys, chill out!" but even in his dreams he couldn’t bring himself to make a sound. He had lost his Mate, there was nothing left for him to do.

Another pulse of burning, this time of oil, let out a new, sharper scent. A loud huff of "over here!" that Dean didn’t recognize. It was stupid, really. Now all the Big Bads out here would get him. Another shout in the distance, this time close enough to understand.

"I can smell him! He’s over to the north!"

That snapped Dean out of his haze enough to understand he wasn’t dreaming. He was awake and alone and in heat in the wild. He wasn’t going down without a fight, though. As soon as he found his hands, he was going to reach back and-

A wet, hot snuffling pushed against his back and face, licking at his ear and hair with a tongue as wide as his face. The familiar smell of wet-dog-old-blood-family-pack-nest flooded his nose and almost, ALMOST gave him a sense of relief.

"Tre." Was all Dean could choke out before an Alpha smell that felt almost like Sam but not, almost exactly the same as long ago but so much sadder. Lesser. Dean didn’t care. He reached out from the ground like a small child, curling his wings up and in, even as strong cold arms wrapped around him.

"Hey there, cher. Whatcha doin’ out here? I got you cher. Shhhh."

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahk, this one is another hastey mess, so if you see any problems, or if there's any confusion, just send me a comment and i will fix it.

Castiel’s Wings burned with fatigue, but they did not falter. The initial symptoms of his unexpected Rut had simmered to a dull ache and left him cognizant enough to understand how extreme his behavior toward his superiors had been. It did not concern him.

Logically, the Alpha knew his actions were driven by a desire to find this possibly dead, likely unwilling Omega Renegade and breed him until the only scents put out by him would be a mix of them both forever. His mouth swelled with the urge to bite a neck he’d hardly seen. It did not matter. Nothing could bring him satisfaction, least of all reason. If anything, having some lucidity return to his mind only bent it further to his goal.

He now had the sense to fly only by starlight. The strange inversion of his wings that brought him so much notice by day made him a ghost by night. His days were spent in sleepless hiding, intermittently plotting against Michael and Raphael, considering his various courses of action when darkness came, and furiously masturbating to eyes of peridot and lips of satin.

Arriving at the burning rubble of his Mate’s former Erie eventually helped him to shake the blind lust. Nothing was left but ashes and corpses, and had Castiel been of sounder mind, perhaps he would have offered his fallen men a few words, or even a thought beyond "fallen enemies of Mate". The smell of death filled his nose, and it took half the night to pick up the faintest of trails. A sign of a poor landing through the trees, an almost imperceptible bend of grass, and, invisible to anyone but an Alpha, a tiny, bent fluff of down. Almost purple, in its multifaceted hue of indigo. Distinctly blue. A slice of heaven, a draught of clear water, a breath of cool air on a breezeless day. He inhaled the faded, suppressant-soaked scent and could almost feel the sweet press of leather in his watering mouth.

He wept like a child when he realized the uncontrollable pleasuring of himself had drowned away any trace of his Mate that might have remained. He now had a trail of sorts, at least. His Mate and perhaps a few others had walked through the trees, cleverly avoiding the skies. The most logical direction would be south, perhaps to another sanctuary, but Castiel doubted they would have taken that course. Whatever they had kept inside that mountain would have been of too much value to trust in the hands of enemy territory, and the Alpha was almost sure they would have gone to the Free Cities in the west.

Stull had brought him another success. Signs of an encampment, hastily covered. Mate in Heat and crippling NEED. He quickly took to the skies again, aiming for the desert and the quickest path to freedom. But before he set his course, some instinct pulled him down, and he found himself following the craggy Fens that bordered the forests of Purgatory.

Ancient magic kept all within secret, and safe from Seraph and Human alike. Only by some mysterious permission was anything allowed in or out. Even sun and wind seemed to stop at the edges, controlled by the mysterious Sun King and their court.

Castiel knew as a Seraph he would not be granted access, and as his Mate’s heavy Heat scent pulled him further to the borders his rage increased.

How DARE this King of the Sun take his Mate? How DARE anything allow his Mate to suffer in agony without him, Castiel, Alpha and suitor by right of combat? He would spend his life killing anything that tried to enter or exit this land without his Mate in tow, someone would let him in or he would wear that supposed king’s crown as his own, and raze the entire forest to-The veil of mist thinned, and a smooth path of stone appeared before him. As the Angel rushed forward in blind demand, he thought he heard the low chuckle of a woman in his ear.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If something doesn't make sense, or if there's a glaring inconsistancy, let me know. That being said, you'll get my apology when you pry it from my cold, dead, shipping fingers... right after they pull my body from the dumpster I live in...


End file.
